A Fight for Life
by Lynzee005
Summary: Moriarty has returned. Molly is missing. And Sherlock suddenly finds himself on the most important case of his life. But he predicted this, and they were ready...**COMPLETE**
1. Taken

****A/N: I hope that this will become something of a Season 4 Project for myself, with two more "episodes" in the works (in my head, anyway) so I've tried to write as closely to how an episode might be structured as possible, cinematically and thematically. The title is modified from a chapter in _A Study in Scarlet, _in keeping with the episode titles given in the BBC series. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my betas-MizJoely and luckbringer-for their help in getting this story ready! Totally dedicate this to you both. Enjoy! ~ Lynzee********

* * *

December 28, 2014  
Bethnal Green, East End  
Late Afternoon

It wasn't the threat she'd been expecting, not the one he'd prepared her for the last time she saw him. But Molly knew. The moment the television in the morgue flickered and she saw his scheming face frozen on the screen, his taunting words echoing against the stainless steel equipment and cold tile floor, Molly knew.

Jim's words—words he'd spoken before, recited at the beginning of every phone call, the ones he'd greet her with when he met her at the morgue or at the door to her flat—were meant for _her_.

She was far more calm about it than she expected she would be. In all the times she had imagined this very scenario—when she'd rehearsed it as she'd been instructed, going over the steps in her head in the dead of night as she was so wont to do—she _always_ imagined herself in a dizzying panic, probably crying, most definitely sweating. Now, however, she was plagued by…_nothing_. Unruffled, she tidied the lab and sent the email that had been sitting in her Drafts folder for nearly three years, since the day she'd been made to write it and save it for this very moment, the one they both hoped would never come.

Then she replaced her lab coat with her trench coat, grabbed her purse and keys and mobile, switched off the lights, and proceeded to the leave St. Bart's hospital.

Banishing the visage of her sudden tormentor from her mind,_ his_ instructions filled her head instead._ Do not deviate from your routine, _he'd told her. _Do everything exactly as you would do. _So rather than flagging down a Hackney and heading for Meena's—as she might have been tempted to do otherwise—she proceeded to walk the one-third of a mile down Giltspur, up Newgate, and then around again towards Paternoster Square and St. Paul's Underground station.

Keenly aware the entire time that a large man with a shaved head was following her.

The long walk afforded her many opportunities to leave a trail, and as she meandered deliberately down streets crowded with post-holiday shoppers and vacationing Americans, their heavy Nikons bumping against their vast rotundity, she left clues that she knew he would find. Because even though she knew he was leaving on one of his brother's missions—she glanced at her watch then and realized that, at that very moment, he was likely already in the air—she figured he would have certainly heard about the jammed TV signal, and he would abort his mission. At the very least, he would have received her email. It didn't matter that they'd fought—_stupidly_—over his sobriety. It didn't matter that that he hadn't brought a case to her in months, not since that autumn day in her lab.

She knew he would come after her. In time, she knew he would.

Now was the time to be smart. She had to lose her tail, if she could; if she couldn't, she had to stay sharp, focused, and safe. Attracting attention or alerting the authorities would only tip them off, and they likely wouldn't be so easily deterred, anyway. _If you__'__re being followed, don__'__t do anything suspicious. Lose them in a crowd if you can. But proceed directly home._

She had agreed to this. She had to be ready.

Once in the station she debated, briefly, about whether to take the Hammersmith &amp; City from Barbican to Whitechapel or the Central from St. Paul's to Bethnal Green, and once again his words haunted her: _Wherever possible, get home as fast as you can. _H&amp;C ran every ten minutes; Central was running every three. She hadn't lost her mystery man, but was confident that she may be able to in the throngs that crowded the Tube at this time of day during the busy Christmas season.

Running on adrenaline, the three stops to Bethnal Green left her no time to think of her escape plan once she arrived. She simply followed the crowd up from the trains level to Cambridge Heath Road, hoping it might have been enough, and for a while she thought she had succeeded. Still, she dropped her breadcrumbs, little messages that she knew _he_ would pick up on.

Near the corner of Braintree and Malcolm Place, she bent to tie her shoelace and tore a section of her floral shirt to affix to the top of a construction marker—'CAUTION' it read, which seemed an obvious enough sign—and noticed a white Toyota crawling up the street nearly a block behind her. She took the railway underpass, blending into a gaggle of jogging moms with baby strollers, and quickened her pace as she turned onto her street, leaving her final clue as she began knocking furiously and obviously on the door to her landlord's suite on the main level of the multi-unit townhouse.

The man, known only to his sub-letters as Mr. Delacroix, answered the door in a huff. "Miss Hooper, I'll kindly remind you once again that, unless your flat is in immediate danger of burning our building to the ground, one knock is sufficient."

She smiled, as openly as she could, while noticing that the Toyota had stopped, half a block up.

_Surround yourself with people. As long as there are witnesses, you__'__ll be buying time._

She put a hand on his shoulder. "Mr. Delacroix, I'm…I'm going on holiday for a bit. I was hoping to ask you for a favour?"

"You won't be asking me to feed your cat again will you?" he asked. "Because the last time you did—"

"No, nothing like that," she laughed, keeping one eye on the Toyota. The bald man was in the passenger seat; the driver, she noted, had dark hair and a stubbled chin. She committed their faces to memory.

"Would you come up?" she asked. "I'm in a bit of a rush."

Mr. Delacroix grumbled but Molly knew he would not deny her such a simple request.

"I can give you five minutes, love," he said. "But I've got a roast cooking and my show starts soon…"

_Five minutes__…_Molly wondered if it was enough time to get help. But who would she call? Ringing DI Lestrade would mean a cavalcade of police cars, and the men they'd be looking for would have been tipped off by their associates and made their getaway long before Lestrade's squad could even make it halfway across the distance between the Yard and her front door. She could call John, but what could he do, realistically, against an enemy like this? The one person she knew _could _help was at least several miles away on a military airbase, making his way back into London; at worst, he was in the air over the Channel, heading for Continental parts unknown.

_He wants me, not you. You__'__ll be nothing but bait in a trap he sets to get to me, _he'd told her. _But I can use you to get to him, if you do what I tell you_…

Molly realized, all too clearly and with a finality that sank her stomach into the soles of her shoes, that it was vitally important that she allow herself to be taken. The thought brought stinging tears to her eyes and cold waves of fear to her veins. But she steeled herself. For him—this man, the one who told her once that he needed her—this was what she had to do.

Mr. Delacroix locked the door to his own flat and trudged up the stairs behind Molly, who had already reached her front door and was whirling through her flat like a dervish, putting her plan into motion.

"Miss Hooper, is everything all right?"

"Fine!" she said, as she pulled out volume after volume from her bookshelf, flipping through pages and highlighting as she went before replacing the books on the shelf.

"This is rather odd—"

"I have a friend who will be coming by to look after my flat and Toby," she said as she scoured the page of another book before returning it to its spot, glancing at her watch as she did so. "He's—er…working on his…doctoral thesis, and…I told him he could borrow any books he needs as well, so…"

She stopped, briefly, as a wave of panic finally did hit her. What if this wasn't enough? What if he didn't know? What if he couldn't pick up the trail she'd left? Her heart sank as she looked around the room, wondering if she should leave a note instead, something more direct. _Clues, Molly, are all I will need, _he'd told her. _If you can, leave me clues. But nothing obvious__…_

"Miss Hooper?"

The moment passed. She smiled. "Please tell him I said it's okay to peruse my book collection. Can you remember that?"

"Yes."

"No, I mean, exactly as I said it. It's okay to peruse my book collection."

"Right, I—"

"Eugene," she said, using his first name for the first time in all the years she'd known him. He snapped to attention, and she smiled to soften her commandment. "Please."

He nodded, swiping his tongue over dried lips before speaking. "It's okay to peruse your book collection."

She smiled again and hurried to replace the last book just as the doorbell rang. Her heart thudded in her chest and a surge of panic and bile rose in her throat, but she let out a giddy laugh. "Goodness! Here already! Well, I should go let them in. Thank you. Mr. Delacroix, you've been most helpful."

She ushered him down the stairs and into his flat before he'd had a chance to utter a coherent reply, and once his door was shut, she opened the front one.

Sure enough, the men on the threshold were the same ones from the Toyota. The first man, the bald one, grinned at her.

"Been expectin' us I suppose?" he growled, careful not to be overheard.

She swallowed and nodded, careful not to betray an ounce of the fear that coursed through her as she stood, dwarfed, in the shadows their bodies threw into the ground floor landing.

The second man shuffled his stance behind the first. "You didn't go an' do nothin' stupid, now, love?"

Molly shook her head. "No. 'Course not."

"Good," he continued. "Then you'll be ready to come with us?"

She paused, wondering if there was anything else she could do—anything else she could leave—that would aid in her eventual recovery. She had been right in her descriptions of the men and their car. What more could she do?

Then she heard it—a big clue, spoken in the harried and frustrated whisper of the first man to the second, about London traffic at this time of day and how long it would take to get to their destination—and it dawned on her. She _almost_ smiled.

"Well?" the man asked her, leaning menacingly on the doorframe, his thick greasy fingers gripping the whitewashed jamb.

"Please," she begged, injecting the tiniest amount of controlled fear into her voice. "Please, let me feed my cat. I don't know if anyone will be around for days, and I can't bear the thought of him going hungry…"

The men wavered. For a moment, she wondered if it had done the trick.

"Do you have pets?" she asked. "A moggy of your own? Please. He's just a wee thing, still practically a kitten. Doesn't hunt too well. He'll die if I don't leave out some extra food and—"

The first man wavered but it was the second man who relented. "Fine. But 'urry it up."

She smiled, hoping they could see the tears in her eyes—she hadn't planned that, but spun it to her advantage—and turned to rush up the stairs again and into her flat.

Ignoring Toby's plea for attention, she dashed around the kitchen, dumping three extra large heaps of kibble into Toby's bowl and emptying a can of wet food into a dish from the cupboard. But this wasn't about feeding Toby; not entirely. As the striped feline began digging into what must have looked like a veritable feast laid out before him, Molly tore the label off the can in her hand and set the tin on top of the pile beside the sink. Grabbing a pen from the telephone nook in the short hall between her kitchen and her front parlour, she scribbled one word on the paper—one word, enough to inform but not enough to look like a clue—and folded it up into a neat square, carefully but firmly tucking it into the gap behind the metal buckle of Toby's collar.

She scratched the cat between the ears as he gorged himself. "Don't go tearing around too much," she whispered to him as real tears began to roll down her cheeks. "You'll knock that paper loose and ruin our chance at a reunion."

He purred under her touch and she stroked his fur twice more before swiping angrily at her face and turning on her apartment.

"It's all here," she whispered to the empty room. "All of it, if you know where to look."

_I will find you,_ he'd told her.

She sniffled. "You'd better…"

She left down the stairs and rejoined the men on the landing, who took up position, one on either side of her, as they ushered her to the Toyota. She got into the backseat with the bald man.

As they sped off down the road, he roughly tied her hands together behind her back with a length of coarse braided rope that she knew would chafe and cause marks if she tried to loosen them; they rounded the street corners at dizzying speed until they pulled into a shaded lane between a darkened park and a tall highrise. She was pulled out of the car by the elbow and made to stand at the back of a van.

They were switching vehicles.

She controlled her panic at the thought that her clue about the Toyota might lead nowhere. But there was nothing she could do about that now. As the bald man held her by the elbow, the dark-haired man opened the cargo doors to the van, revealing the dapper and menacing form of Jim Moriarty leering back at her.

"Good golly Miss Molly," he grinned. "Did you miss me?"

Before she'd had a chance to utter a reply, she'd been hauled up into the van. She offered little resistance until the dark-haired man tied her ankles and the bald man secured a long piece of fabric between her teeth, tying it tightly behind her head, effectively silencing her.

Jim's eyes were on her as the two hauled her now-struggling body up and into a large trunk, its lid propped open, at the front of the hold. Her own eyes, for her part, blazed at him as he lowered the lid of the trunk and locked it into place. She heard the engine turn over, and was dimly aware of movement as the van presumably drove away from the alley.

In the close dark of the steamer trunk, Molly breathed deep and even, fighting tears as she clung desperately to the faith she had in the consulting detective she knew would save the day.


	2. Realization

29 December 2014  
Baker Street  
Morning

"The Singhs have finally let the rooms next door, bless them," Mrs. Hudson chimed as she busied herself in the upstairs kitchen. "Movers have been here all morning."

Sherlock frowned, steepling his fingers beneath his chin as he attempted to re-open the Mind Palace doors his landlady's chattering had closed. John's laptop whirred, sending a heated stream of air out from the cooling fan on the back of the computer's housing, close enough to Sherlock's right knee to distract. It was the only sound in the room aside from Mrs. Hudson's bustling kitchen noises and the occasional buzz from Sherlock's mobile, which was on the desk and sealed, inexplicably, in a plastic baggie along with a large quantity of basmati rice. Everything—every noise, smell, or sensation—was an annoyance. He just wanted to be alone.

Mrs. Hudson walked into the living room carrying a tray of tea and a light breakfast—eggs, bacon, toast, a small dish of butter—and set it down on the desk. "I remember when Arundeep and his wife—Priya? I think it's Priya…—when they first moved in. The boys were just babies," she prattled on, talking to the food as much as to the men in the room. "No need for a six bedroom townhouse now that the last one's gone off to get married."

Sherlock sighed and closed his eyes, willing the ambient noise of the room to disappear or—failing that—willing _himself _to disappear.

"I'm happy, though," the landlady continued. "It'll be nice to have a family in there again instead of empty rooms. Always a bit of a worry. That place is liable to go up in flames at the slightest spark. All that wood, you know."

"What's she on about?" Sherlock finally asked John. "Who are the Singhs?"

John looked up from his computer screen. "Are you—are you being serious right now? The Singhs? The family who own the block next door? They've only been trying to let their apartments all year, Sherlock. Haven't you been listening to a word Mrs. Hudson has been saying about it?"

Sherlock _hmmm__'__d_ and settled back in his own chair, steepling his fingers. "Evidently not." His phone buzzed once more, and once more he ignored it. "I don't really have time to concern myself with the comings and goings of our neighbours," he told her, his tone emotionless.

Mrs. Hudson nodded and waved, indicating that his message had been received loud and clear and without offense. "Sorry Sherlock," she said. "I suppose this is a challenging case, then?"

John snapped. "DI Lestrade kicked him out yesterday. He's in a bit of a sulk, that's all."

"I was not _kicked out_," Sherlock argued. "Perhaps I was being a bit _aggressive _in the directions I was giving his men."

"He was ordering them around like he was Chief Inspector," John told Mrs. Hudson.

Sherlock was incensed. "As the only representative in the room with the entire British secret service on speed dial, and considering the fact that Moriarty has historically been _my_ nemesis, I thought it was only appropriate—"

"That you commandeer the entire case?" John asked. "Lestrade said he would come by today with whatever results he had. Until then, you were to stay put. Here."

"Going stir crazy," Sherlock tapped his foot. "Is that why you're here? To babysit me? Did he make you promise that you wouldn't let me leave your sight, John?"

John stood up and grabbed a piece of toast, smearing a knife-full of butter on one side before taking a bite. "He's just trying to do his job, Sherlock."

"Oh, that would explain why there are bobbies at the door, too," Mrs. Hudson exclaimed.

Sherlock sighed, lifting his lanky frame out of his chair to go to the window, where—indeed—he saw two uniformed officers posted in a car parked outside. He huffed. "I don't see why _that _is necessary."

"For your protection," John said, his voice rising. "Believe it or not, Lestrade actually kind of cares about you. And if Moriarty is alive…well, it's not that hard to figure out who he'd be coming for, is it?"

_That__'__s what I__'__m worried about_, Sherlock thought. _Except I don__'__t think it__'__ll be me he__'__s coming after__…_

"Any word from Lestrade, anyway?" Sherlock asked.

"Not to me, but…" John nodded to the bag in which his phone sat. "What's going on there?"

Sherlock glanced to the phone in the bag. "I spilled a considerable amount of water on it in the plane yesterday during our descent..."

John sighed. "Well, I think it's probably working. You've been getting messages all morning."

Sherlock glanced at the bag. "Have I?" he asked, reaching into the bag for his handset, shaking pieces of rice off the plastic casing. They fell to the floor and skittered away in every direction. "Ah, so I have!"

A handful of texts—most of them from Lestrade, and one from John—two phone calls and six emails had come in during the night. Sherlock was about to go through them all when, as if on cue, a knock at the downstairs door reverberated up the stairwell; when neither man stood up to answer it, Mrs. Hudson grumbled and made her way out of the room.

Only moments later, DI Greg Lestrade burst into the parlour, a bipedal maelstrom. "How is it even possible that he survived?" the Inspector asked, obviously in the middle of a conversation he'd been having with himself for a quite some time. "Why aren't you answering your texts? I don't know anymore. I mean, you watched him blow his brains out, didn't you?"

"Morning, Greg," John said, disposing of the unuttered pleasantries from the Detective Inspector with the edge of annoyance still sharp along his words. "We're fine, thanks…tea?"

Sherlock ignored the doctor and cleared his throat. "Well I didn't exactly check his pulse before I jumped off the roof."

Lestrade wore his distaste evidently on his face. "You're not checking your phone, Sherlock?"

"You made it fairly clear I wasn't welcome to be involved, so…"

Sherlock enjoyed brooding for the sake of a good guilt-trip, but Lestrade wasn't playing along. "We're no closer now than we were last night. Anyone with a computer could have adjusted the TV signals. A thirteen year-old could do it. Apparently it's not that difficult. Why would you want it to be? Just hack in! No big deal!" The older man huffed and scrubbed his hand over his face. "All we know is that the source of the feed seems to be coming from Leeds—"

"Well that's a start," John offered.

"…and Bristol, and Oxford, and Nottingham, and Cardiff, and, and, and…" Lestrade shook his head. "The signals are so encrypted, bouncing around from tower to tower, so our guys can only pick up echoes of where the signal has been, and not enough to trace it back to where it originates." He ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair. "It's a mess, Sherlock. A right mess."

"It would be, wouldn't it?" Sherlock said. "Whether this is the real Jim Moriarty or a cleverly disguised fake, _someone_ is picking up the reins."

"So it might _not _be him?" Lestrade asked. "Why am I not comforted by that?"

Sherlock knew the feeling all too well. "I spent more than two years attempting to dismantle his network, but at the time I was pulled out it was already clear to me that that it was far larger and more comprehensive than anyone could have fathomed," Sherlock said. "Moriarty is exceedingly clever."

Lestrade nodded. "But you're cleverer."

"Is this a formal invitation?" Sherlock asked.

A vein in the side of Lestrade's neck seemed ready to burst. "Well I'm not bloody well sending it on embossed cardstock, so yeah, this is as formal an invitation as you're gonna get!" He took a deep breath. "So as long as you don't go bossing my men around again…"

"Speaking of," Sherlock said, "Have you done what I asked and posted police officers with Molly Hooper?"

John scratched his earlobe with growing impatience. "Oh, poor Molly," he thought. "She must be beside herself. Seeing your dead sociopathic ex-boyfriend popping up on every television channel two and a half years after you helped his nemesis cheat death has got to be a bit mind-melting."

Sherlock knit his brows together. It was the first time he'd thought about the pathologist since ordering Lestrade's men to check on her at the hospital and her home the day before. He knew they hadn't been on speaking terms lately—not since the undercover operation that had forced him to play junkie—and Sherlock wasn't about to pretend that her absence hadn't touched him deeply, or that he hadn't been even a little bit offended at the suggestion that he had lapsed in his sobriety. But he had respected her desire to not see him thus far; surely if ever there was a time when they could set aside whatever residual anger she still harboured towards him, it would be now.

_Considering everything else__…_

"She's on holiday," Lestrade announced. "At least that's what the officer we sent to Bart's was told, anyway. And we sent someone to check at her flat, but—"

Sherlock snapped his eyes to the Detective Inspector's face. "Holiday?" he furrowed his brow. "Molly never takes a holiday."

"Well it is Christmas, and she's entitled to one," John scratched the side of his nose as he leaned forward. "Several probably. Granted at the behest of her employer. Which is _not _you, in case you hadn't noticed," he said. "She's not on call for your cases like some people…"

Annoyed, Sherlock narrowed his eyes at John—testy John, newlywed John, five-pounds-heavier John, John with the chafed hands and bleary, shadowed eyes of a man spending his nights sneaking away from his pregnant wife's side to aggressively masturbate behind a locked bathroom door by the blue-grey glow of a laptop screen. Sherlock remembered his former flatmate's habits well. _Little wonder he__'__s so testy_, Sherlock thought.

"Mary still has morning sickness?"

John cocked his head to the side. "How did you—?"

Sherlock compulsively rubbed the side of his middle finger against his thumb pad. "You took her home immediately after we left the airport yesterday. I assumed it was for her own safety, but I had noticed that she looked a little green the entire time we were there. You have a receipt in your wallet dated from yesterday—ginger supplements, a few bottles of electrolyte drinks, and a box of bland crackers. Classic buys for a gastrointestinal illness. Although the inclusion of anti-emetic tablets suggests this is more serious, perhaps—"

"Hyperemesis gravidarum, yes," John said, his short temper mitigated by the shadow of something hovering between 'impressed' and 'nostalgic' falling across his face. His tone softened, "She's been sick for a while. We're keeping an eye on it."

Sherlock nodded. "Obviously you'll give her my best."

"Yes, I will."

The two men shared a look, and Sherlock managed a small smile before continuing. "Now, regarding the state of your hands: do you not still use the hand salve I recommended back when—"

John's eyebrows shot up and he flushed a shade of red not usually seen outside of tomato patches. But before either of them could continue their tete-a-tete, Lestrade stood up to his full height.

"Would you look at that. Kent, apparently."

Sherlock turned to face Lestrade. "What?"

"Molly," he replied, reading off of his phone's tiny screen, "Her supervisor just forwarded me the email he got, a request for a leave of absence. She's gone to Kent to visit her father."

Sherlock's eyes widened. "Her father?"

Lestrade nodded. "Yeah, that's right."

John cast a glance at Sherlock. "Is something the matter?"

Sherlock ignored him. "What were her _exact words_?"

Lestrade furrowed his brow and read, again, from his screen. "'_Please consider this my formal request for a leave of absence, effective immediately. I__'__m very sorry for the short notice. I need to get away for a while for personal reasons. I will be going to Kent to say with my father for a spell. He is not well, and__—_'"

Sherlock said not a word as he stood and marched into the hallway, grabbing his Belstaff and scarf on his way out.

"Sherlock!" John cried as he chased after him.

"Sherlock!" Lestrade joined him, dashing out behind the pair.

They reached the bottom of the stairs before Sherlock responded. "Molly Hooper is _not_ on holiday in Kent with her father."

Lestrade shook his head. "But how do you know?"

He sighed deeply. "I know because I wrote that email for Molly three years ago, after I jumped from the top of Bart's hospital."

"_After_?" Lestrade and John both chorused.

"As a code, a warning that only I would understand," he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket and scrolling through the missed messages. "If Molly were ever to be in danger, in any way, she was to send this email. This. Exact. Email. It was to be sent to me by blind carbon copy. A simple way to ensure that I knew she was in trouble without immediately tipping any outsiders off that she had contacted me." He brought up his emails and sure enough, he'd been the recipient of the same email from Molly. His heart sank as he read the words, remembering how they'd drafted them together one late night before he'd left London. The time stamp revealed the email had been sent less than half an hour after Moriarty's message had first begun broadcasting across the United Kingdom. _Nearly a full day ago__…_Sherlock realized.

He turned on his heel and headed for the door.

"Wait, Sherlock," Lestrade contended with the detective. "So this means something's happened to Molly?"

"Possibly," Sherlock replied, his voice shaking. "At the very least she felt she was in danger enough to send this, as we agreed."

Lestrade shook his head. "But…_how_ do you know she didn't _actually_ go to Kent to visit her father?"

Sherlock wheeled around to face Lestrade but it was John who revealed the truth. He closed his eyes and agonized a sigh that seemed ripped from his solar plexus.

"Her father's dead," John said. "Been gone for quite a while, too."

Lestrade blanched, the heartbreaking seriousness of the situation broadcast across his open face. "Then where exactly is Molly?" Lestrade asked, his voice soft.

Sherlock furrowed his brow, struggling to find his voice, which cracked over his words. "I don't know. But I'm sure I'll know how to find her."

"How?" John asked as Sherlock bounded out the door, down the steps and to the street.

"From the clues," he said, as if it were the most matter-of-fact statement to make. He stretched out his hand and hailed a cab.

"Clues?" Lestrade puzzled.

"Molly's clues," Sherlock confirmed. "She'll have left some, if I taught her anything."

A black cab pulled over to the curb and Sherlock was about to step in, John at his heels.

"This is exactly what I didn't want you doing, Sherlock," Lestrade complained.

"I don't think you have a choice in the matter," John spoke up.

"But I don't understand," Lestrade held out his hands. "Where are you going?"

"Driver," Sherlock barked. "Bart's Hospital. And there's a tenner in it for you if you get us there before the top of the hour."

"Yer the boss," the cabbie replied as he pealed away from the curbside, leaving one of Scotland Yard's finest detectives and two of his squad in a confused mope in front of 221B Baker Street.


	3. Clues

29 December 2014  
Whitechapel  
Mid-morning

**_Where are you? -SH_**

Sherlock had sent the text as he entered the cab; half an hour later, he still hadn't received a reply. He knew that could mean almost anything—Molly could be in hiding, or maybe she left her phone at work. But his mind immediately—irrationally—went to the worst possible scenario. Until he saw evidence to the contrary, he was labouring under the belief that Molly was hurt, bleeding, dying…

He had lost almost an entire day. That was all he could think about: the full day between the sending of her email and the receipt of it. It wasn't how the plan was supposed to go, obviously, and the sheer number of things that had gone wrong in the lead-up was gut-wrenching—Sherlock's forced exile, however short it turned out to be, meant he wasn't available when Moriarty made his reappearance; the spilled water on the mobile and the rice remedy, both of which limited his access to his phone messages; DI Lestrade's lack of knowledge of Molly's father's death, which he would have had had he not sent Sherlock away; no follow-up on Sherlock's frenzied request to track Molly down the day before…

_A whole day. _

"Do you know how much I could have done if I'd known about this yesterday?" Sherlock asked all of a sudden to no one in particular. He hadn't realized that the conversation he'd been having had been entirely within his own mind.

John was struggling to keep up with his longer-legged companion as they strode away from the Underground station. He deftly picked up what Sherlock dropped. "But you didn't know, and now you do, so…"

Sherlock huffed and tried to see past the slight panic glazing his eyes. "So much can happen in a day, John. Molly could be anywhere."

"Maybe she's just at home," John said. His attempt as pacifying the agitated detective was admirable but ultimately fruitless. Not even he could believe the words he was saying.

They'd followed her clues from St. Bart's Hospital to St. Paul's Underground—unnecessary clues, as Sherlock already knew she would have headed directly to Central Line platform on her homeward commute, but clues which he found breathtakingly endearing nonetheless as he followed her literal footprints mashed into flower beds and patches of mud where she knew he would see them.

Molly lived off Cephas Street, a short walk from Bethnal Green Underground station, but along the roads of Whitechapel her trail grew cold. Sherlock tried not to let his mind wander to that most horrible conclusion—that she'd been snatched somewhere along the way and hadn't even made it home—but the farther he went without a sign that she'd walked this sidewalk in the last twenty four hours, the less hopeful he was.

"John, I think it goes without saying that I'd rather you not blog about this case," Sherlock admitted as they began the trek around a small park.

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"So then why are you here?"

John pulled up. "If you need to ask that question…"

Sherlock stopped, sighing. He knew how important Molly was, not just to him but to everyone. He was honestly surprised Lestrade hadn't followed them there and brought half the Met with him. "I apologize, John."

"'S alright," John returned. "I guess I'm just trying to figure out why any of this is happening. To Molly, that is."

Sherlock scanned the streets, mentally mapping the possible routes, the safest ones, the ones most travelled. "You know when I faked my death, I needed someone I could trust who could—"

He stopped, turning to John, yet another apology ready on his lips. John shook his head.

"It's okay," John said, holding up his hands. "You had your reasons for keeping me in the dark. I'm just glad you had someone to help you, even if it couldn't be me."

"She was just…everyone knew who you were. No one would have suspected Molly."

"But someone obviously suspected, or else she wouldn't be in danger."

Sherlock nodded, that familiar sickening feeling dropping into the deepest corners of his stomach.

John paused, choosing his words carefully. "Exactly _how_ _much_ danger are we talking about here?"

"Potentially great, I'm afraid," Sherlock said. "But I don't think he'll kill her. He doesn't want her. This is about me. And him. And the surest and most devastating way to get to me would be through someone close to me, someone I care about…"

John cleared his throat. "And Molly is…?"

Sherlock had no answer. When he'd first met her, she was just a pathology student. Four years ago, she was the specialist registrar with the incurable infatuation with him, whose lab he frequented far too often than was strictly necessary. Two years ago, she was his lighthouse.

Now?

_Molly is__… _

"A genius!"

Sherlock bolted to the corner of the construction site at the corner of Braintree and Malcolm Place, where a line of orange barricades had been erected to block pedestrian access to the sidewalk. There, a scrap of floral fabric fluttered aimlessly in the midday breeze, caught on the ragged bolt hole of a construction sign.

_Molly__'__s shirt._ He recognized it instantly, remembering the snarky comment he'd made when she first showed up at work wearing the blouse, maroon coloured with smaller white roses all over it. _"__Whoever invented floral-patterned clothing should be be shot,__" _he'd said. _"__They__'__re probably already dead,__" _she'd quipped quietly. _"__Then they should be dug up, reanimated, and shot dead a second time.__" _Then, after a pause: _"__Honestly, if you wanted to wear my Nan__'__s curtains, I could have spared you the trip to Marks and Spencer and the __45 you spent on the shirt and made you one myself.__"_

Cruel, he knew, but truthful. He hated florals, especially ones that reminded him of ugly drapery. He hated them especially on Molly.

She knew what she was doing…

"She made it this far," he said as he and John took the road along the railway that turned and ran under the tracks.

As they approached the row of terrace houses, Sherlock's pace quickened. He had not been to Molly's flat since his self-imposed exile, and even then it had only been a handful of times, less than a few weeks in total. In those dark days, when life as he knew it seemed like such a very distant memory, she'd run out to his favourite shops for chips because she knew he missed it, or would simply talk to him about her favourite TV shows or the gossip at the hospital because she knew he didn't want to think about the events that were slowly, insidiously, becoming the new normal for him. Molly had known him better than anyone in that flat; and he, in turn, knew her—knew what songs she'd sing in the shower, or how often she burned her toast, or how she fell asleep watching the home shopping channel with such regularity that he was often forced to trod out of her bedroom in the back corner of the flat at half-three in the morning to turn the television off so he could get some shut eye.

When that happened, he would watch her—sometimes for a minute, sometimes for an hour—while she slept, Toby curled in the nook behind her knees. Like a meditation, her sleeping breath became a rhythm he memorized, something he recalled and could count on during his shakiest moments, when the daunting task of dismantling Moriarty's vast network still looked impossible.

She had marionetted him across the city to her doorstep via a trail of clues that she knew he would follow because he told her he would follow them and she trusted him. He hoped with everything he had that he would open the door to her flat and see her, sitting on the sofa watching tarted-up former soap stars pitching cubic zirconia earrings and imitation leather handbags at hyper-inflated prices to the unsuspecting British public…but deep down, he knew better.

He took the three steps up to the common front entrance of the building in one bound and bent down for the spare key, hidden within the third brick from the bottom right side of the door where it had always been. The brick, he noticed, was sticking out a barely-noticeable eighth of an inch from flush. _Molly,_ he thought with a wry smile, remembering her surprisingly anal-retentive chastisement when he hadn't returned the brick to the perfectly flush position one day during his first visit to his London bolt hole. _Another clue_…

"Spare key?" John asked.

Sherlock pulled the brick out and retrieved them—two of them, one for the outer, downstairs door and one for the upstairs one. He replaced the brick and slipped the key into the lock, noticing with curiosity—and a new, sickening drop in his stomach—the smeared, greasy handprint on the doorframe. He held up his own hand, hovering it inches above the mystery print, and determined from its size that it belonged to a very large man.

"Are you her friend?" a voice sounded from the window.

Sherlock stepped back to see who was speaking and saw her landlord, Mr. Delacroix, peering out through the grate. Sherlock smiled and went along with it, putting on a voice. "Yes, actually. Mr. Delacroix, is it? How did you—?"

"She told me you might be comin' by," the man said. "Seemed pretty sure of it, actually."

"So she left already?" Sherlock inquired.

Mr. Delacroix _Mm-hmm__'__d. _"Afternoon yesterday. Came 'ome in a flurry and left just as fast."

Sherlock turned the information over in his head as he continued to smile. "Well, that's good. She needed the holiday, I reckon. Always working so hard, our Molls, isn't that right John?"

Behind him, John nodded, a little behind the curve but catching up quickly. "Yup. That's our Molls."

Mr. Delacroix managed a half smile before continuing. "I won't take care of that cat of 'ers anymore, not since he bit me last," he said. "I suppose that's why she went to you."

Sherlock feigned a friendly grin and shrugged, "Yep, guess so." Then he slid the key into the lock, turned the tumbler, and pushed the door open. "Thank you, Mr. Delacroix."

"Yeah, right," the man said as pulled his head back from the window and slid it shut.

Sherlock and John regained their composure and walked into the shared entry hall. Delacroix's door on the right was the first, No. 9A; there was a narrow hallway leading to the back garden and a second suite, No. 9B, accessed on the left, beneath the stairs that led up to the remaining two suites, 9C and 9D, belonging to Molly and a retired schoolteacher with two Dachshunds, respectively.

"Up we go," Sherlock said as he took to the stairs.

"The handprint on the doorframe…"

"You noticed that?"

"Not Mr. Delacroix's."

"Decidedly not," Sherlock said as he gained the upper landing. He turned to his right and unlocked the door.

The flat was immaculate, as he might have guessed it would be. Toby, restless from such a long time spent alone, chirped an anxious greeting as he leapt from his perch in the front window overlooking the street and marched to Sherlock, purrs in his throat.

"Molly?" Sherlock said into the darkness as his hand hit the lights and flooded the room.

"I'll check the back," John said as he started to his left, into the hallway between the parlour and the kitchen and down towards the bedroom.

But Sherlock already knew she wouldn't be there.

_Damn it_, he cursed silently. For all his care and consideration, Molly had been taken; she was almost certainly going to be held for ransom, a payment only Sherlock could make.

Unless he found her before then.

His detective's eyes began scouring the apartment, and he was startled by the sound of footsteps behind him. He turned to see the landlord standing in the doorway.

"Sorry for the fright," the old man said, "But I just remembered something. Something about your doctoral thesis."

Sherlock furrowed his brow but, once again, played along. "Yes?"

Mr. Delacroix scratched his head. "The strangest thing," he said. "Miss Hooper told me to tell you that it was okay for you to peruse her book collection. For your thesis, I mean."

Sherlock spun back to the bookshelves lining the two perpendicular walls making up the farthest corner of what would have been her dining room had Molly owned a dining table. "Ah," he said, barely able to contain his joy. "Right. For my thesis, yes. Of course." He turned again and stuck his hand out to the elderly landlord. "Thank you very much."

"Right," the man returned, glaring at the cat for a moment before muttering another "…Right," as he turned and descended the stairs.

Sherlock shut the door and locked it behind him, then called out to John. "The books," he hissed. "It's in the books!"

John came back from the bedroom. "The books?"

"Clues," Sherlock said as he began scouring the bookshelf. "They're here in the books."

Sherlock grinned ear to ear as he noticed the first and then the second upside down book on the shelf. "Clever girl…" he smiled as he pulled the first book off and flipped through the pages. It didn't take him long to spot the word, highlighted in pink on the first page. He scrambled for a notebook and pen, and as he pulled each upside-down volume from its rotated berth on the shelf, he wrote down each successive highlighted word on the paper beneath his hand.

"What?" John asked, standing beside Sherlock, reading from the list. "Followed. Taken. Two. Male. First…what kind of clue—?"

"It's a message," Sherlock hissed as he tossed the last upside down book aside and read the string of words, fusing and forcing them to make sense. Then he picked up his mobile and punched Lestrade's number. The Detective Inspector picked up on the second ring.

"Sherlock, where are you?"

"Molly was followed and kidnapped by two men in a white Toyota. We're looking for two Caucasian males, both large, one bald and one with dark hair and a stubbled face."

John stared at the list and back at Sherlock while the detective received confirmation from Lestrade. He turned to John. "There's a car in the area. They're going to canvas the neighbourhood for white Toyotas and—"

"Sherlock! How did you get all that from these words?"

Frustrated, Sherlock jabbed his finger at each scribble on the page, and as John read and re-read them, he watched as it all clicked into place. "_Followed. Taken. Two. Male. First. Large. Bald. Other. Brunette. Five. PM. Shadow__…_" he looked up at Sherlock. "Molly…left us a road map to her own abduction?"

"She most certainly did," Sherlock said, almost proudly.

"Using random words from random books?"

"And replaced upside down on the bookshelf for me to find."

John ran a hand through his hair. "You've rubbed off on her, you have."

Lestrade's voice could be heard on the other end of the phone. "My god, Sherlock. You'll never believe this, but they found your white Toyota. Abandoned. Three blocks away."

Sherlock took down the address of the intersection and started for the door, but the anxious _Meow _at his feet reminded him of his other obligations. He stooped to pick up Toby, cradling the feline in the crook of his arm.

"Sherlock?"

"I'll need to stop on the way home for cat food. And probably cat litter. And a litter box," Sherlock said. "And I'll need an amendment to my rental agreement with Mrs. Hudson to allow for pets on the premises. But first things first…"

They shut off the lights and left the flat, Molly's cat still nestled in Sherlock's arm.


	4. Photos

****A/N:** _This is where the warnings come into play—violence and some non-consensual sexual situations ahead_******

* * *

29 December 2014  
Location Unknown  
Late Morning

The creak of footsteps on worn wood floors announced his return before the key in the lock and the whine of the rusty metal hinge on which the lid of the trunk rested sounded loudly in her ears. Molly had spent so long in the steamer trunk, deprived of light and with only the barest of muffled sounds reaching her ears, but while her limbs ached and her bonds rubbed her skin raw, it was the blindingly bright light that caused her the most grief as Jim Moriarty hauled her up out of the trunk and to her feet.

"Whoa! Careful there," he said as Molly's weak and cramped legs gave out under her own weight, sending her toppling into Moriarty's side. He supported her with a hand around her waist. "Don't need you getting banged up before your time."

Molly mumbled a response and lived and died against the gag still shoved in her mouth.

"What's that love?" Moriarty teased. "I can't understand you. You seem to have something in your mouth."

He yanked the cloth out with great force that made her cry out in pain as he pulled it down over her lower jaw until it hung around her neck. She licked her lips, or tried to, but her thick tongue was drier still and made the whole endeavour pointless.

"You bastard," she murmured, her voice hoarse in her throat.

"My mother always taught me: if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all," he told her, spinning her until she was facing him. He slipped his fingers beneath the gag. "I can arrange that again if you're not careful."

Molly hesitated, but bit back her comments. Moriarty grinned.

"That's more like it," he said, gripping her painful jaw in his hand and turning her face to look at his. "You have such a pretty mouth, and I hate seeing it gagged." Then he laughed. "Oh, who am I kidding—it's the sexiest thing! A woman, dropped at my feet, trussed up like my very own Christmas prezzie…"

"No, please," she whispered.

He appeared to consider, shrugging his shoulders before agreeing to her wishes. "All right then," he said. He started to walk, pulling her with him until he reached the far side of the room, where he dropped her onto a bed. "You'll be comfortable here, yeah?"

_It__'__s better than the trunk_, she thought to herself.

He loomed over her for a moment. "You know Molly Hooper, I thought we had a connection, you and I," he told her. "When I was 'your boyfriend Jim' back in the good ol' days. Before you had to go and involve yourself with _him__…_"

"Jim," she said, out of habit. "I can explain…"

"No need, poppet," he cooed. "I have all the explanation I need. That fiancé of yours—what's his name…_Tom_. Sherlock version two-point-oh. Though, really, with an intellect like that I think they should stop production on the next version, at least until they work out the kinks."

"We're not engaged anymore," she said.

"Oh, I know," he said, engrossed for a moment by the skin around his right pinky finger. "You saw to that the moment Sherlock returned from the grave. Coincidence?" he asked, grinning at her again. "Highly unlikely."

"I-I didn't break it off with Tom for—"

"Not consciously, baby doll," he winked at her. "Ain't sabotage grand? Sometimes you don't even know you're doing it!"

Molly shut her eyes. She felt dirty, cold. Everything ached. She tried to push herself into a more comfortable position. Moriarty stepped in to help, swinging her legs up to the middle of the mattress and then pivoting her upper body too, so she was less on the edge. Then he continued to look at her.

"Did you miss me, then?" he asked her, sitting on the edge of the bed next to her. "Did you think about me at all on those long, cold, lonely nights when Sherlock—your one true love!—was off on his merry adventures trying to break down the organization I've spent _my whole adult life building_?"

His fury terrified her. She winced. "Jim—"

"_YOU DON__'__T GET TO CALL ME THAT!__" _he barked at her. Then, he softened, took a deep breath she could hear, and leaned over her to brush errant strands of auburn hair off her forehead. "Not after you colluded with him to keep his secret from the world."

One of the two men Molly recognized from the day before strolled into the room. "You yellin' boss?" he asked, leering at Molly. "She givin' you trouble?"

Moriarty stood up from the edge of the bed and slammed the trunk lid shut. "Nothing I can't handle."

Molly fixed her eyes on the menacing man advancing toward the head of the bed. His grin belied a sick appetite, and Molly felt her stomach clench as he neared, meaty fingers twitching at his side. She was disgusted, utterly, but the state of those hands, the wretched metallic smell he gave off, so overpowering the closer he got.

"You bein' a good girl?" he menaced.

Rearing back as much as she could, Molly spat at him. What little moisture available to her landed with a satisfying splat against the man's shoe. But her triumph was short-lived; the man raged, lifted one of those sausage hands, and brought it down against her face. Molly cried out as she tasted blood, blinded by the pain and shock of his assault.

Not a second later, a sharp gunshot rang out. Molly felt blood splatter across her face; she gasped, her mouth hanging slack. She watched the man standing beside the bed staggered and fell against the wall before slumping to the ground. His blood pooled behind him and frothed up and out of his mouth as he gurgled, attempting to breathe through the bullet hole in his lung before he died.

Moriarty pocketed the pistol and came back to sit on the bed. "No one touches my Molly," he said, as Molly found her voice and began to cry, stunned at what had just happened. As she wept, Moriarty kicked the body of his henchman over and pulled Molly into his lap, using the corner of a handkerchief to wipe away some of the blood from Molly's cheeks.

"Let me go…" she whimpered, flinching at every movement her captor made. "I'm not your Molly…I'm not your Molly…"

"Oh, but you are," Moriarty said. "You've been mine since the first time I had you…" He bent to her face and trailed his tongue along one of the already drying bloodstains before wiping it away. Molly sobbed and shuddered, trying to push herself away. But he pinned her body down against his with one hand and forced the other beneath the waistband of her trousers. She cried out in shock and struggled even harder to squirm away, but he only forced his hand in further, pressing through the cloth of her panties, moving them against the very core of her. "Remember when I used to lie between these thighs? When I made you _beg_ me for more?"

"Stop…" she cried through gasps and sobs wrenched from her throat as her body betrayed her and she felt her hips buck involuntarily against his machinations. Mercifully, he pulled his hand back, sniffing his fingertips with a satisfied grin that made Molly's stomach churn. She didn't bother trying to hold back the tears from her eyes.

"It doesn't matter," he muttered, tossing her back to the bed as he stood up again. "It's not you I want anyway. You're just a pawn. The bait." He bent over her again and pulled the gag up from her throat, securing it again between her lips as she groaned in protest. "You're going to get me what I want," he told her, reaching for his phone. With a smile plastered on his face, he snapped a few pictures, and Molly wept as she heard buttons pressed and the familiar sounds of text messages being sent. "Think Sherlock'll like these?" he asked.

He laughed as he turned from her bedside and kicked the shoe of the dead man beside the bed. "Don't worry about _that_ happening again," he said as the second of the two men entered the room and, with nary a reaction, pulled the dead body out and through the door that led beyond the walls surrounding her. "You should rest, love. We've got quite a game to play."

When he shut off the lights, the room was plunged into darkness, save for the streetlight outside the window, slanting in across the floorboards.

Molly strained against her bonds and struggled to push the gag out of her mouth with her tongue and teeth. It was futile, and she quickly gave up entirely after a few minutes. She was so tired, but too afraid to sleep. She didn't know how this would end.

For the first time, she wondered if she was, perhaps, in too far over her head.

* * *

29 December 2014  
Early Afternoon  
Baker Street

As Sherlock and John returned to Baker Street, Toby in tow, past the two police officers still in the car across the street, they trudged noiselessly up the stairs, dejected as ever by the lack of returns on their afternoon's investigation. The Toyota, it turned out, had been abandoned; canvassing the neighbourhood where the car had been found revealed no suspicious activity. The vehicle identification number on the car had been hastily scratched out, but Scotland Yard was running a search on the likeliest combination of letters and numbers that they could make out; no pertinent information had yet been retrieved.

The only link they had to Molly were two strands of long brown hair on the backseat, most likely belonging to her. It was barely enough to warrant a missing persons file, let alone a criminal investigation. But it was enough for Sherlock to believe that Molly had been there.

Sherlock set Toby down in the middle of the parlour and helped John up with the bag of cat food and litter essentials that they'd picked up on the way back from the only crime scene they knew of. As they stepped through the door to the flat, and as John deposited the cat accoutrements in the kitchen, Sherlock recalled with a pang that the comfort of John's presence was temporary. He'd be returning to the house he shared with Mary soon; the detective would be alone in three rooms that suddenly seemed cavernous without the gentle hum of John's laptop or the padding of his feet on the well-worn path between his chair and the fridge and back again

Sherlock suddenly felt himself grow impatient. "You'll be off soon, I suppose?"

"Hm?" John turned from the table. "Where did you plan on putting the litter bin?"

Sherlock removed his coat and tossed it over his armchair, scratching the feline between the ears and under the collar. As he did, his fingers glanced across a folded piece of paper that came loose in his hand. He pulled on it, unclipping it from its home beneath the collar clasp, and recognized it immediately as the label from a can of cat food. _Exactly like the stack of cans on the countertop. __Purina._ _Toby's brand. He won't eat anything else._

"What's that?" John asked.

Sherlock, unsure himself what it was, unfolded the paper and let his eyes fall on the word written, unmistakably, in the hand of the forensic pathologist they were searching for. "From Molly," he said, keeping his voice low and steady, handing the note to John. "_Neighbour_."

"Neighbour?" he asked. "_Her_ neighbour?"

Sherlock shut his eyes. _Why did Molly only write one word? Time? Fear?_ He did tell her specifically to not be obvious, and one out-of-context word is about as non-obvious as can be. She must have had faith that he would understand it but that if it fell into the wrong hands no one would be the wiser. But why _this_ word? It had a hundred different meanings and also one very specific one. _Think, Sherlock, _he berated himself. He recalled the details of the people who lived in her building—Mr. Delacroix, the landlord, obviously had a preferred type of tenant as his building was full of single women: the retired schoolteacher with the dogs in 9D, the steady stream of single female occupants in 9B, and Molly in 9C—and realized quickly that none of them matched the descriptions of the men Molly had said were involved in her kidnapping. Certainly none of them were the owner of the handprint they'd seen on the doorframe. But that didn't mean they couldn't have been involved in some other way…

He furrowed his brow. "We need to go back," he said. "Canvass the street. Someone had to have seen something."

John was already calling Lestrade, requesting backup.

"We just need a handful of officers," Sherlock said. "Ten or twelve ought to do it."

"We'll be lucky to get _two_," John shook his head. "This isn't his only case, y'know."

Sherlock grumbled as he fingered the note. "It's the most important one..."

John sighed into his own phone as he pulled out Sherlock's from the pocket of the detective's great coat. "Your mobile."

"Hm?"

"It's buzzing," he said, "No, not you, Greg. Sherlock, why don't you take this thing off of vibrate once in a while so you can hear—"

When his eyes happened on the lock screen, however, he froze, his words cut off mid-sentence.

"Come on, John, give it here." When his outstretched hand was not filled by the cold weight of his mobile, his irritation reached a tipping point. "You berate me for ignoring it and then refuse to give it to me when asked for—"

"Sherlock…"

He looked up at John, whose face had lost what little colour it had. "What?" he asked, grabbing for his phone. He flicked his thumb over the screen, keyed in his passcode, and brought up the text messaging window…and a photo of a bound and gagged Molly Hooper, lying in the centre of a filthy mattress. Her face and hair were splattered with blood, and it was clear she had been crying.

**_I believe I have something of yours…xx JM_**

Sherlock felt blind rage behind his eyelids as he shut them and struggled to control his heartbeat. It had been one thing to imagine Molly's abduction; seeing photographic proof of it was quite another thing altogether. _Who's blood is that? If he's harmed her..._

"Sherlock's gotten a text," John explained to Lestrade on the other end of the phone. "Yeah, from Moriarty. A photo. Of Molly..."

The detective said nothing. A second text arrived:

**_What? No quick quip in reply? You're slipping, Sherlock._**

Sherlock typed his response:

**_What do you want?_**

"Lestrade is on his way." John offered as he ended the call. "He can look at the texts..."

Suddenly protective, Sherlock shook his head. "I don't want him seeing these. _Molly_ wouldn't want him seeing these."

"But they can help find her..."

_You can't promise anything when it comes to Jim Moriarty_, Sherlock thought, uncharacteristic pessimism peppering his mind. Still, he stood up straight and took a deep breath. "You should go home, John."

"I don't have to, y'know," he said. "I can stay."

"I know, and that's appreciated, but at the end of the day it's bad enough that one person I care about has been put in harm's way. I don't need your abduction on my conscience as well."

John snorted. "Yeah, cheers mate."

_There was a better way to phrase that, _Sherlock reprimanded himself, but before he could summon the wherewithal to actually come up with it, another text bounced in from the ether, lighting up Sherlock's mobile phone screen. The welcome distraction diverted his attentions as he swiped across the screen and read the full message:

**_You. Me. Kensington Olympia station. 7pm or the girl gets it._**

Then:

**_I kid, I kid. I just always wanted to say that…_**

And finally:

_**But seriously. 7pm. **_

Sherlock shot back his affirmative reply, a sickening feeling pitted in his stomach as he dropped his phone back into his pocket with a sigh. "John, I'm a dangerous person to be around as long as Moriarty has his sights trained on me. I've let Molly down already, and if something were to happen to you, too—"

"Sherlock, I know," John said, hauling his bag up around his shoulder. "Lestrade'll be here in half an hour. I'm a phone call away. Yeah?"

Sherlock nodded. "Right."

John smiled as reassuringly as he could and turned to leave the flat but paused on the threshold. "I'd say you haven't let Molly down at all. Quite the opposite. Apart from all the other things...the clues and all that...I mean, you've probably given her the best chance of survival just by being the one who's looking for her."

Sherlock considered but was not convinced. "What if that's not enough?"

John's smile faded until his lips were nothing but a firm, unbroken line across his face. There was nothing for it. The day—only now brightening to its fullest as the sun crested in the sky—had suddenly grown ink black. John turned and left the flat, and Sherlock sat in silence with his troubling thoughts as his only company.


	5. Questioning

29 December 2014  
Bethnal Green, East End  
Mid-Afternoon

Sherlock and Lestrade stood shoulder to shoulder at one end of Cephas Street. The midday sun had transitioned behind a bank of cloud cover, and the warmth of the day dissipated quickly with every minute they advanced closer to sundown. Lestrade sipped from a paper coffee cup as he watched his officers knocking on doors within sight of Molly's flat, hoping for a break that would lead them to her. They'd started with Molly's townhouse, fanning out from there, but had not—at least at this point—had any luck making contact with most of the occupants behind any of the doors on the street. Only a dozen or so people were home, and judging by the speed with which the officers were advancing, it seemed no one had seen anything suspicious.

Lestrade had agreed to allow Sherlock to tag along but hadn't given him the official okay to investigate, which was all part of the deal they'd had going for years. Ever the stickler, Sherlock abided. But as more and more doors along the street went unanswered, his patience began to wear thin.

"When was the last time you saw the business end of a shower nozzle," Lestrade asked. "Or, you know...slept?"

"Is that the polite way to tell someone they look terrible?" Sherlock huffed.

Lestrade sighed and took another drink, finishing what was left inside. He tapped his index finger against the plastic lid of the cup. "It's Monday. It's Christmastime. People who aren't at work are away on holiday." He gestured to the street. "I know Molly is your friend, Sherlock. But there's not really a lot that can be done at this point. This legwork stuff...that's not your show. Why don't you go home and get some rest."

Sherlock hunched his shoulders up, pushing his hands further into his pockets. "I suppose someone will need to make the official missing persons report," he said. "Or...whatever it is."

The Inspector nodded. "Already taken care of."

The detective turned to the man beside him, who kept his eyes locked on the street. He tried to take another swig from the empty cup in his hand and scowled as he crumpled it in his fist.

"When it comes to Moriarty, you can't do this without me," Sherlock said. "You _need_ me here."

"I know," Lestrade replied as the first of the three uniformed officers returned to their location. "I bloody well know."

The officer spoke. "One fellow two doors down said he saw the Toyota when he was coming back from the bins, got a look at the guys inside, but his description is exactly the same as Molly's—one bald, one dark hair…"

Sherlock was betting that any one who saw anything would say the same. What other evidence could a neighbour possibly give them? _Maybe there's another explanation behind Molly's clue?_

"What if she meant something else?" Lestrade asked, as if reading Sherlock's mind. "Neighbour…not her _literal_ neighbour or someone in this neighbourhood, but maybe a _figurative_ neighbour? Someone on the periphery of her work life, perhaps."

"Or maybe she was trying to write 'neighbouring' and ran out of room?" the officer offered. "As in something bordering something else—someone from a neighbouring town, a neighbouring office…?"

Sherlock had his doubts about the entire thing. Molly wouldn't have been obvious but she wouldn't have been too obscure either._ It has to be a neighbour, _he thought. _But who…_

"We can't wait until everyone comes home to to ask them what they saw," Sherlock fumed. "It's already been too long and we're running out of time…"

At that moment, a car pulled around the corner and headed into the parking space beside Molly's building. Sherlock watched as the vehicle cut its engine and its driver—Mr. Delacroix—stepped out of the vehicle, his arms laden with brown paper grocer's bags.

Sherlock surged forward.

Lestrade noticed him noticing the car. "Who's that?"

"Molly's landlord," Sherlock said, already way ahead and calling the name of the building owner as he ran out into the street.

Eugene Delacroix turned, a frowning scowl on his face. "You again?" he said, looking over Sherlock's shoulder at Lestrade, pulling up the rear.

"Mr. Delacroix, we need to ask you a few questions about Molly Hooper," Sherlock said.

"Me? Why? What's this about?"

Lestrade pulled out his badge and showed it to the older man. "I'm DI Greg Lestrade, Metropolitan Police. This is Sherlock Holmes, consulting—"

A glimmer of recognition flashed on the landlord's face as he regarded Sherlock. "I thought you looked familiar. From the papers..." he said. "You're not wearing your hat."

"Mr. Delacroix, if you could—"

"You looking for Molly? Is that why you came here today? Is she in trouble?"

Lestrade dodged the questions. "When was the last time you saw her?"

"Yesterday," he said. "Come home from work, I suppose. In a right tizzy, she was, poundin' at my door. Needed me to come up with her to her flat."

"What did she do there?"

"Made a mess of her bookshelves," he said. "I just chalked it up to excitement. Girl never takes a holiday, doesn't seem to have many friends coming 'round, and she was talking about going away for a while so I figured maybe she got herself a new beau or something. Never seen her like this before."

Sherlock fisted his hands within his pockets and bit his tongue, stifling the fury brewing beneath his ribcage. He looked off down the street, seething. "Was she alone?"

"Yeah," Mr. Delacroix nodded. "She said she'd be leaving soon, and someone came to the door to pick her up, and that's when she pushed me downstairs again."

"Did you see the person at the door?"

Mr. Delacroix nodded. "Two men. Big lads, not quite as tall as you—" he motioned to Sherlock. "But three times your girth, both of 'em. One looked like a rugby player. The other was just fat."

"About what time was that?" Lestrade asked.

"Maybe half three?" he said, setting down the grocery bags in his arms. "I recognized one of them. Used to see him around with one of my other tenants."

"Who?" Sherlock asked. "Which tenant?"

"Joyce," Mr. Delacroix answered. "Joyce Miller, apartment 9B. She moved in here...I'd say it was last fall, maybe early winter. Stayed up through this summer but paid me for the whole year. In cash, which I thought was odd, but she was a good tenant so I never asked questions."

Lestrade was already on the phone with Scotland Yard, barking the name Joyce Miller to whoever was unlucky enough to be sitting on the other end of the line.

"This Joyce," Sherlock continued. "You saw her with the rugby player or the other one?"

"I said he looked _like_ a rugby player, not that he was one," Mr. Delacroix corrected. "And I didn't get a very good look at him—the chap who visited her or the one in the car. He only came 'round here a handful of times. Never looked to be a romantic thing, but you never know these days…"

Sherlock turned the new information over in his head. It certainly jibed with Molly's final clue: a neighbour of hers with a tie to the man who abducted her. None of it sat well with Sherlock. If the rugby player guy was the same one her downstairs neighbour had been going out with, it was entirely possible Molly had been under surveillance for months, possibly even longer—since Sherlock's return. Molly was observant, but maybe she wouldn't have known or suspected that her neighbour's boyfriend was one of Moriarty's henchmen. Not until he darkened her doorstep...

Still, the rest didn't sit right. If she'd known it was her former neighbour, wouldn't she have said that somehow more specifically in her note? The apartment number? _No, too obvious. _Initials? _Joyce Miller. JM._

_JM__…_

Sherlock pulled his phone out of his pocket and, without looking at the landlord, uttered a barely comprehensible goodbye.

Mr. Delacroix's arm shot out to grab Sherlock's. The detective spun around to face him.

"Is Molly okay?" the man pleaded.

Sherlock looked into the older man's dark eyes, and saw his own fears reflected back at him. He softened. Molly was clearly more important to more people than he had ever imagined.

"That's what we're trying to figure out, Mr. Delacroix," Sherlock answered, resting his hand on the man's arm.

He nodded. "She's…," the landlord began, his voice breaking. "She's just…my best tenant. I'd hate to lose her rental income."

The detective recognized the lie the moment it was spoken, but chose to ignore it, allowing the man in front of him a measure of privacy and dignity as he came to terms with the unknown fate of the woman who lived upstairs, the woman he obviously cared for a great deal.

Sherlock knew the feeling all too well.

"We'll be in touch," he said as he stalked away down the street to where Lestrade was still talking.

Sherlock bent over his phone, tapping out a message as he walked.

"Sherlock?" Lestrade called out. "I'm going back to the Yard. Got a few hits on the name Joyce Miller but it's not what you'd expect."

"What do you mean?"

Lestrade scoured his hastily-written notes. "That name shows up all across England. Some things are odd but not out of the realm of possibility—utility bills started and cancelled under the same name, often within weeks of the start of services, that kind of thing."

"So she moves a lot."

"Yeah, but who is travelling from Manchester to Cornwall to York within one afternoon to buy things like…pharmacy prescriptions and mobile top ups?" Lestrade said. "That's what I've got here: credit card purchases made in locations as far as six hundred miles apart but within an hour of each other. Not online shopping, either. Small purchases. Suspicious but not enough to alert the credit card companies." Lestrade looked down at his notebook. "This particular Joyce Miller also doesn't seem to exist before about eleven months ago."

Sherlock pieced things together within his mind. _A person comes into existence all of a sudden, buys her way into the same building as Molly, pays with cash, all within a convenient and coincidental time frame..._

The idea hit Sherlock with force. "I don't believe Joyce Miller is a real person," he said. "At least she's not actually Joyce Miller."

"Well then who is she?"

"One of Moriarty's agents."

Lestrade blanched. "You mean all this time...and Molly's been living upstairs...?"

Sherlock nodded.

Lestrade frowned. "I never would have imagined that he'd use women agents."

"He doesn't. Not commonly," Sherlock replied. "But it's not as rare as you might think."

He started walking back towards the nearest arterial road, hoping to catch a cab.

"Wait, where are you off to now?"

In his hand, Sherlock's mobile buzzed. He pulled it up to read the message:

_**What can I do for you, baby brother?**_

Sherlock turned to call back over his shoulder. "I have some errands to run. Case-related."

He didn't wait to hear how the Inspector would reply; instead, he rounded the corner and made his way back along the roads towards the Tube station, once again typing as he walked.

_**Molly Hooper is missing and I hold you personally responsible for her disappearance. Your office. Twenty minutes.**_


	6. Whitehall

16 June 2011  
Ministry of Defence Building  
Whitehall

"_I won't allow it," Sherlock said. __"The risks are far greater and beyond the scope of what we could ever hope to ask a civilian to agree to—"_

"_You're not asking me to, I'm telling you I will," Molly replied._

"_And need I remind you that you, Sherlock, are a civilian as well," Mycroft said, his voice even._

_Sherlock sneered._

_"It's because I'm a girl, isn't it?" Molly asked suddenly. "You don't think I can handle it."_

_The detective wheeled on her. "Don't be ridiculous, Molly," he uttered. "You're more than capable of handling this."_

_Shocked, Molly swallowed her initial retort, asking instead: "Then why are you objecting?"_

_He blinked twice as his eyes settled on hers. "I just don't want you to do it."_

_Molly shuffled her feet but didn't break eye contact. "I don't need you to protect me..." she muttered._

_Sherlock looked at her—really looked at her, head to toe, taking in as much visual information as he could about the woman in front of him. __He counted her freckles and noticed two bright red spots among them, indicating that she was probably within four days of the start of her birth control-dictated menses. Were her eyes always that dark brown? She'd lost weight, three or four pounds, since he'd last noticed. Her small, dry, chapped hands—probably from the new body wash she was using, the one that smelled like strawberries and vanilla and roses, which was a scent he enjoyed__—held in front of her like a parcel she kept wringing. _

_What was it about her that inspired such defensiveness in him? She was conventionally attractive__—no bomb shell beauty but certainly above average, finely proportioned and pleasing to look at__—__but so were countless others and he had no special affinity for them. It had to be__ the things he didn't see__—the things he intuited about her from years of togetherness__—that convinced him to hold firm in his stance. He could be gone for months; how would Molly handle the stress of being involved in this without being able to talk about it? Molly Hooper, soft-spoken and mild-mannered pathologist and specialist registrar, would be partly and directly responsible for the safety of a man everyone else thought was dead, including the network of cruel and violent henchmen he was going to attempt to dismantle. What if he failed? What if they found out who she was? How could he live with himself if anything happened to her?_

"_Sherlock?"_

_He snapped to attention and turned to his brother. "Hm?"_

"_I said you need a safe house in London."_

_Sherlock held up his hand and began counting off his haunts. "Kew Gardens, Camden Lock, Parliament Hill, Hampstead Cemetery, Dagmar Court…" he lifted his other hand. "Leinster Gardens, Big Ben—" _

_Mycroft laughed. "Oh, surely you must be joking Sherlock," he chided. "These are all fine and good but they're also unoccupied, un-lived in, and isolated. You need a place to go where you can get assistance should you need it__—medical, psychological..."_

_Sherlock scoffed. _

_Mycroft continued. "For obvious reasons, it can't be with me."_

"_Obvious reasons?" Molly asked._

"_Because I'd murder him in his sleep," Sherlock drawled._

"_Because I'm a visible member of Her Majesty's government with a direct familial tie—"_

"_Unless I can prove otherwise," Sherlock added._

"—_and even with my connections it would be impossible to stash him away in secret for long without coming into conflict with my duties to Queen and country," Mycroft finished, continuing to stare directly at Sherlock. He levelled a finger at him. "You brought Miss Hooper into this years ago when you used her flat to get clean, and again when you asked for her help in this ruse you're currently undertaking. So unless you want to bring yet another innocent bystander up to speed…"_

_Sherlock sulked, as he did every time he realized Mycroft was right._ "_It's not like I'll need it anyway."_

"_You never know," Mycroft answered him, his voice softening. "Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, no?"_

_Sherlock once again looked to Molly. So many years of friendship—how many had it been? Six at least. Nearly seven if you counted her time as an intern at Bart's, when they were the most casual of acquaintances. Before she clued in to the fact that he had a drug problem, the only one of all the staff in the pathology department to notice, the only one to step up and say anything, the only one to offer help…_

_The odd flutter he felt in his stomach confused him. It had been a while since he'd eaten, but these were not hunger pangs; in fact, the thought of eating suddenly made him feel nauseated. No, this tremor was distantly familiar. He had felt it before, on that long ago day when she had stepped outside of her comfort zone and put him first for the first time, with a spare key and a scribbled address on the inside of his notebook. That time, it had been enough for him to feel an irrational but comforting sense of warmth towards another human being, a feeling more powerful than any drug he happened to inject. It was what pushed him to get clean, and what had kept him clean in the long intervening years. _

And it's the very thing you've spent the better part of a decade pushing aside, with meanness and vitriol, _he chastised himself, catching a glimpse of Molly in profile. _

Why should she want to help you? Again?

_He curiously regarded her not with the detached eye of a detective but as a man looking at a woman. A lovely woman. She smelled nice; her skin, marzipan-soft, didn't reflect so much as absorb and refract the late afternoon sunlight that shone in through the window behind her. He liked the sound of her voice, even as she confounded the Brothers Holmes with that particular quirk of muttering incoherently to herself at random intervals during their meeting. He wondered what it might be like to fall asleep with his head on her shoulder, her knit cardigan-clad arm wrapped around his shoulder; or to let her fall asleep against him? He'd never wondered about such a thing before, and now, standing but a few feet from her as she offered herself up to unimaginable danger to provide him with an ounce of protection, it was _all_ he could think about. _

_She didn't need protection. She was strong and competent and more than up for the challenge. He knew that. But while she was busying herself caring for everyone else__—including him__—__where was someone to care for her?_

You do care, Sherlock, _he reminded himself. _You care about her the only way you know how: by keeping her as far away from you as possible._ If it meant being cruel, well, that was how the game was played. It had worked to his advantage thus far—who, besides the occupants of Mycroft's Whitehall office, knew about her position in his life, her importance to him?—and could continue working as long as they were discreet. _

_He did need another, safer London bolt hole…_

"_Do you understand what this means?" he asked Molly finally._

"_Wha-?" she gaped, before remembering herself and nodding. "Yeah. 'Course I do."_

_Sherlock rolled his eyes. "If anyone were to find out that your flat was my safe house, the repercussions could be enormous."_

_Molly shrugged. "I've already helped you fake your death, haven't I?" she hazarded a small smile. "In for a penny…"_

_Sherlock paused for a long moment before continuing, talking as much to Mycroft as to Molly. "If this is going to work, I need assurances that Molly will be safeguarded. And I think it would be wise for us to come up with a plan, a way to let me know that the secret was out, that the flat was no longer secure, or that something had happened to you—" he stopped, not wanting to consider the possibility of anything happening to Molly. He took a breath, standing up to his full height and banishing the thought. "I won't agree to this without that."_

"_Like what?" Molly asked. "Lights in the window, that kind of thing?"_

"_We can come up with something," Mycroft said as he rounded the corner of his desk and stood beside Molly, gently putting both hands on her shoulders. "Little Brother, meet your new safe haven."_

_Sherlock sighed and nodded, and Molly took a deep breath, clasping her hands in front of her. She smiled, crookedly, as she looked down at her entwined hands and then back up at Sherlock. "Just tell me what you need me to do…"_

* * *

29 December 2014  
Ministry of Defence Building  
Whitehall

Being met at the door to the MoD buildings by two uniformed members of Her Majesty's army had never before been such a burden as it was that afternoon. The sun had finally dipped below the horizon, sending cascades of pastels over the London skyline. Sherlock was not the kind of person to notice such trivialities, but on this night it struck him as significant: a second twilight was now falling over Molly and he was no closer to uncovering her whereabouts. She was lying, potentially injured and most definitely frightened, in some horrible unknown location, and he was walking the long corridors to his brother's office, past security detectors and CCTV cameras trained on what was probably one of the safest locations in the whole of Britain. _And no one__—__not one person__—__thought it might be prudent to defend a potential target of England's greatest and most violent threat after he makes his triumphant return from the grave? To train the mighty eye of the British surveillance system on her front door for a moment?_

Sherlock didn't have the patience for Ministry of Defence protocol. Not this night. He endured them because he had to.

After his third pat-down, his escorts changed. A crisply suited secret service agent walked Sherlock the rest of the way to Mycroft's public office, the one not housed in the still-hidden Churchill bunkers deep below the Thames and Pall Mall. Sherlock knew the man would be waiting outside the heavy oak door for the unscheduled meeting to conclude, but he didn't care if he_—mid-thirties, unmarried, gay, oldest of three siblings, boarding school education, drives a Saab, into equestrian sports__—_overheard his entire diatribe once he had his brother in front of him.

Sherlock took a deep breath as the man took up his position outside the door, then twisted the doorknob and pushed his way into the room.

"Sherlock," Mycroft said, his eyes trained on a stack of papers in a manila folder on his desk. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

The door firmly shut behind him, Sherlock began. "You know exactly why I am here."

Mycroft narrowed his eyes as he looked up at Sherlock. "Right, Molly...I'm sorry, which one is she again?"

Sherlock advanced a step towards the desk, already tired of the schtick. "Mycroft, I have never been very good at the finer points of social convention, but I'm fairly certain it's frowned upon to throw a government official of your rank through his own office window."

The older man _tsked _under his breath and put down his pen. "Your pathologist friend? We had nothing to do with that."

"It was Moriarty."

Mycroft sat up and nodded. "Is that so? And you know this for certain?"

Sherlock held out his mobile. "Text messages, instructions to meet him, a photograph of Molly_—"_

Mycroft's eyes flashed. "A photograph? You've seen it? Has she been injured?"

"Don't pretend to care now," Sherlock spat.

Mycroft frowned and looked back to his notes. "What exactly did you want me to do about this?"

"I want you to explain how it is that you couldn't see fit to provide her with a modicum of protection in the aftermath of Moriarty's reemergence yesterday?"

"Why should that have been my responsibility?" Mycroft blasted back before softened. "Oh, right. I suppose in the event of your _incapacitation_..."

"Surely you must have known that Moriarty was still alive," Sherlock accused.

"And if I did?"

"You were sending me on a suicide mission. If you knew Moriarty was alive and you didn't think to protect Molly_—"_

"I apologize, Sherlock, but Miss Hooper's safety and security do not trump matters of national interest."

"In spite of her involvement_—at your insistence_, I might add_—_during my hiatus?"

Mycroft leaned back in his chair. "She is strong, lively, very intelligent. I have no doubt that she will hold her own_—"_

And then it dawned on Sherlock, all at once; shocked, he took in the sight of his big brother, smug behind his desk, and felt his skin begin to prickle. "You let this happen."

Mycroft didn't react.

"You let him take her. You knew all along that he was alive and would target her, and when he did—"

"Moriarty was going to return, Sherlock. When he did, we weren't going to allow him to remain."

Sherlock felt himself losing control of his carefully constructed faculties. "Do you know where she's being held?"

"No," Mycroft said. "We have our suspicions. But since he's made contact with you, if we were to interrupt now..."

Sherlock boiled. "Molly Hooper is not a pawn in some governmental game of Cat-and-Mouse, and neither am I!"

"Don't act so shocked, Sherlock. It doesn't become you."

"You self-righteous_—_"

"You've preparing her for this very eventuality for years." Mycroft shot back. "You knew as well as I did_—_well, no, not _exactly_...but I suspect you suspected_—_that this was going to happen. Why else would you tell her how to leave you clues? Did you teach her baritsu and jujutsu as well?"

Sherlock took half a step towards the desk, ready to strike, but stopped before he could make any further movement. He had a little less than three hours before he had to meet Moriarty in Kensington; if he assaulted his brother, he'd be in lockup all night. That would accomplish nothing...

Mycroft's voice was confident and sure. "You aren't so innocent in this, Sherlock," he continued. "You long ago accepted that Molly would be baited and that she was the best chance you had of settling this ridiculous score with Moriarty. And you never told her." He regarded his brother with cool detachment. "You're no better than we are."

Seeing red, Sherlock summoned every last drop of his humanity to restrain himself. "We're done here," he spoke, through gritted teeth.

Mycroft looked back down to his desk. "That's usually my line."

Sherlock had a thousand words at the ready—each more angry and damning than the last—but he chose instead to passive-aggressively slam that same oak door shut, a trait he was ashamed to admit had most likely come from their mother and which felt so incredibly good that he opened and slammed the door shut a second time just for good measure. Revelling in his catharsis; the feeling carried him down those long hallways, out the doors, and all the way onto The Mall, where he decided against a cab and instead started out on the long walk alongside St. James Park, Buckingham Palace, and Hyde Park towards Kensington and his meeting with Moriarty at the train station.

He had murder in his veins that he doubted even the cool London drizzle would be able to quench. The walk would do him good.


	7. Disequilibrium

****A/N: Happy 2015! Here's my New Year's gift to you all-the first bit of Sherlolly goodness! It follows another dark Moriarty scene but I'm hoping the good stuff after that outweighs the bad!****

EDIT: I changed the order of these two sequences-after looking at it, I realized having it be flashback first and then current day was more powerful. Nothing else has changed. What do you think?

* * *

26 April 2012  
Bethnal Green, East End

"_Do you know any martial arts?__"_

_His voice startled Molly out of her reverie, and she turned to look at the doorway into her living room, where Sherlock stood, leaning against the wall._

"_No,__" __she said, confused. __"__Not really. I mean, I took a boxing class once with Caroline a number of years ago. She__'__d had this boyfriend and__—"_

_Sherlock was rolling up his sleeves and moving her furniture around, clearing a space in the middle of her small living room. She narrowed her eyes._

"_Sherlock?__"_

"_I__'__m going to teach you some basic self-defence maneuvers,__" __he said. __"__Ones I hope you__'__ll never have cause to use, but which you should have nonetheless.__"_

_Molly shook her head. __"__No, Sherlock, as your attending physician__—"_

"_You__'__re not my physician,__" __he argued. __"__You are a forensic pathologist who stitched up a shallow knife wound in my side four days ago__—__a stitch job which, and don__'__t take this personally, you could work on__…"_

_Molly gaped. __"__I sew cadavers for a living, Sherlock. Not living, breathing humans.__"_

"_Which is why it__'__s hard to say you__'__re my doctor, and why your advice is to be heeded with the same general care as that which I__'__d receive from the online NHS symptom checker.__"_

_She scowled. __"__Thanks.__"_

"_No offence.__"_

"_None taken.__"_

_He pushed his sleeves up past the elbows and took up a stance facing her. __"__Stand up.__"_

"_Sherlock__—"_

_He ignored her. __"__The three most essential principles you must remember when entering into a defensive situation with an assailant are: one__—__to disturb your attacker__'__s equilibrium,__" __he told her. __"__Getting them off-balance should be the very first thing you do.__"_

_He motioned for her to stand, and with a deep-seated sigh, she did._

"_After you have rendered them off-balance, you must use your advantage to surprise your attacker before he has the chance to regain his feet.__"_

"_I don__'__t see how__—"_

"_Third,__" __he barrelled onward, __"__Focus on the joints.__" __He stepped towards her and illustrated, pointing to various locations as he named them off: __"__Ankle, knee, shoulder__…" __he circled her wrist. __"__Wrist, fingers__…" __He wrapped an arm around her and walked his hand to the middle of her lower back. __"__Lumbar spine__…__neck__…"_

_As she stood in total shock, with Sherlock__'__s hands on her body, Molly was unable to speak._

"_You must subject the joints to strains that they are physically incapable of withstanding.__"_

"_H-How?__"_

"_Grab my shirt.__"_

"_What?__"_

_Sherlock sighed and took Molly__'__s right hand in his, planting it against his chest; Molly__'__s breath hitched in her throat. __"__Watch,__" __he ordered as he placed his left hand over hers, slipping his four fingers beneath her palm and pressing his thumb against the back of her hand. Gently, he twisted the hand counter-clockwise, so her palm faced her, and switched hands, his right hand holding the uncomfortable position while his left hand trailed down her arm. __"__A simple wrist-lock. It caused maximum supination of the hand and puts tremendous strain on the radio-ulnar joint. If done properly, it almost certainly will cause the bones in the wrist and elbow to break and will also probably dislocate the shoulder. As a pain-compliance technique__—"_

"_Pain compliance?__"_

_In a flurry of movement, by way of demonstration, Sherlock first tucked his left arm around Molly, pushing her hand towards her and sending her off balance, using her own desire to wriggle free and away from the pain of a potentially broken wrist to push her to the floor, which he guided her to gently using the arm wrapped around the small of her back as support._

This is too much, _Molly thought as she stared up into his eyes from her sudden position on the living room rug. __"__Uncle,__" __she whispered._

"_Are you okay?__"_

"_Yeah,__" __she said as he stood her up again and took a step back. She shook her wrist and pressed her other hand to her cheek. __"__Just__…__wasn__'__t expecting.__"_

"_Exactly,__" __he took up a stance once more. __"__Now. Your turn.__"_

_She shook her head. __"__No, Sherlock, I really don__'__t feel comfortable.__"_

_He shrugged. __"__You wouldn__'__t _actually_ be able to hurt me,__" __he told her._

"_Seems rather pointless then,__" __she told him with a short laugh._

"_Come on, Molls. Pretend I__'__m an attacker,__" __he said, reaching out to fist a wad of fabric from the front of her shirt. __"__Grab my wrist.__"_

_Her blush was ferocious. __"__Sherlock, I__—"_

"_Take it.__"_

_She meekly did as she was asked, copying his movements from earlier__—__slipping her fingers between the palm of his hand and her chest, twisting the wrist counter-clockwise. __"__Hold it like this,__" __he instructed, positioning her hand with the flat part of her fingertips pressed against the back of his wrist and her thumb laying across the top of his hand. __"__Good. Very good. Keep twisting.__"_

_Molly pushed and watched Sherlock__'__s wrist twist, until his palm faced him.__  
_

"_Use your leverage,__" __he said. __"__You__'__re manipulating the joint to an extreme. Anyone in this position will be desperate to avoid the pain of a broken wrist. They__'__d be like putty in your hands.__"_

_She did as she was told, and gradually she reached a point where Sherlock seemed only too willing to allow her to move him where she wanted. It was a palpable shift in their power dynamic, even if it was manufactured. Molly didn__'__t know what to do._

"_Now what?__" __she asked, breathless._

"_Take out my legs.__"_

_Molly shook her head. __"__This is so stupid__…" __she muttered, though she instinctively she put her arm behind his back and gently__—__too gently__—__attempted to kick his feet out from under him with an arcing sweep of her right leg that did little more than cause their ankles to knock together._

"_You can do better.__"_

"_Shut up,__" __she said. __"__I__'__m concentrating.__"_

_On the second go, she kept the pressure on his hand and used the heel of her right foot to dislodge both of his feet at once, and the intended effect was achieved. Sherlock tumbled backwards and sideways, landing on the sofa._

"_Sherlock!__" __she cried. __"__I__'__m so sorry. Oh my god, are you okay?__"_

_The detective managed a small laugh as he shook out his hand. __"__Good job, Molly,__" __he said. __"__Like your stitches, it could use work, but for a first timer__…"_

_She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. __"__Well I__'__m not about to go practicing on you,__" __she said, as Sherlock folded his hands neatly over his abdomen and crossed his legs at the ankle. Almost immediately as he was settled, Toby leapt up down from his perch and saw fit to make a bed in Sherlock__'__s lap, barely a handful of inches from the delicately-bandaged wound in his side. The detective winced, slightly, before relenting and petting the feline between the ears._

_Molly was aghast. __"__Toby,__" __she hissed._

"_It__'__s fine,__" __Sherlock said. __"__I don__'__t mind.__"_

"_You sure?__"_

_He nodded, pushing himself up slightly to better accommodate the circled cat in his lap. __"__Did you know that the frequency of a cat__'__s purr is thought to promote healing?__" __he announced._

_Molly shook her head. __"__I__—__no, I didn__'__t know that, but why am I__'__m not surprised that you do?__"_

_Sherlock continued unabated. __"__Vibrations in the range of twenty to one hundred-forty Hertz are thought to be beneficial to bone strength. They can also lower blood pressure, heal soft tissue damage and infection__…"_

_Molly grinned and crouched down she she was eye to eye with her pet. __"__Hear that, Tobes?__" __she said. __"__Scoot up a bit so you__'__re sitting right on that stab wound.__"_

_She laughed and stroked the cat under the chin, her hand colliding with Sherlock__'__s as he did the same thing._

"_Whoopsie!__" __she whispered._

"_Sorry,__" __he said._

_Molly felt Toby begin to purr. __"__All the same, I think he appreciates the extra attention.__"_

"_Apparently.__"_

_She nodded, but pulled away all the same, feeling a slight blush creep up from her neck and into her cheeks. In her shyness, she averted her eyes. __"__Tea?__"_

"_Delightful.__"_

_As she walked into the kitchen, expecting her faithful feline to follow her, she was surprised to find that Toby remained curled against Sherlock. The skittish cat had never shown much affection for anyone other than Molly in the past, and it was more than ironic that a man practically incapable of such feelings himself had managed to coax them out of a cat like Toby._

No, not incapable, _she corrected herself. _He's more than capable…

_She busied herself with the tea and recalled with a certain nostalgia the last time Sherlock had sat on her sofa (a different one, in a different flat, a cozy one bedroom above a Bangladeshi restaurant in Spitalfields where the the scent of curry lived in the wallpaper, which was one of the reasons why__—__when she moved to Bethnal Green__—__she had to buy the sofa on which Sherlock currently sat.) It was, admittedly, not so very long ago as to be relegated to a bygone era. But she had pushed the memory of that time to a corner of her mind saved for Things She Knew Would Never Happen Again, and thus it might as well have been a million years ago for how she felt about it._

_She__'__d only known him for a short time then, their entire relationship conducted at the side-by-side microscope station in Bart__'__s pathology lab during her internship and the last months of his studies. She had fallen hard and fast for her bench partner. He was cold and all-too calculating, emotionally unavailable (weren__'__t they all?) but she longed to be the one to break through that. That was her M.O. Fix the broken ones. Fix them until they__'__re well enough to toss you away._

_And he had been broken. She saw that. Such close confines were the reason she__'__d first noticed the clues that formed a picture of a man beset by addiction: the sunken, tired eyes; the erratic behaviour too strange to be chalked up to aloofness or a personality disorder. She recognized the signs, and stepped in to fix it. Like she always did. And she__'__d been rewarded like she always had been: by a man who kept her at arm__'__s length, rebuffing her advances at every turn until she felt smaller than small, less than worthless. She carried her torch regardless, because that__'__s what she did. And he had never seemed to notice._

_Now she knew he had noticed, and she knew he did care. Very much. Spending a night watching telly with him, her cat, and nary a word spoken between them would be more than payment enough for all the hardship._

Is that why you did this, Molly? _she asked herself. _To ingratiate yourself into his life? Make yourself indispensable? Are you putting your pathetic life at risk so Sherlock will notice you?

_She shook her head as the tea kettle began to whistle and Toby scampered off through the kitchen and down the adjacent hallway. Moments later, she walked back into the parlour to find Sherlock fast asleep against the pillows._

_Molly smiled and set the mugs down before crouching at his side. She seized the opportunity to brush his curls away from his forehead, where they__'__d flopped errantly when his head had__—__adorably__—__lolled to the side in his short slumber. They were softer than she__'__d expected, and she noticed with a kind of pleasure that her fingertips fit within the spirals as she moved her hands through them. _Lovely…_she thought._

_She came to her senses with a soft sigh. __"__Sherlock,__" __she whispered. __"__Time for bed.__"_

_He barely moved. __"__Can__'__t I stay here?__" __There was a hint of whine in his voice, something altogether too human and unexpected coming from him._

_She rocked back onto her heels. __"__But this is my bed,__" __she told him._

"_I don__'__t mind.__"_

_As much as she wanted to, Molly didn__'__t give herself permission to pick that apart. __"__Come on, Sherlock,__" __she nudged him. __"__I need to check your dressings.__"_

_He voicelessly agreed, allowing her to help him stand to his full height before leaning on her for support as they made their way down the short hallway to her bedroom. He sat on the bed and waited while she collected her first aid supplies before rejoining him._

_She laid out a fresh bandage and her roll of surgical tape beside him on the bed and knelt on the floor in front of him._

"_Lift,__" __she urged, and he pulled up the bottom edge of the plain t-shirt he__'__d been wearing, exposing his pale but toned stomach. Molly ignored the flutter of attraction that settled in her own stomach, pressing her fingers to the square bandage and lifting it away from his skin in her best imitation of a doctor._

"_It__'__s coming along very nicely,__" __she said, pulling the gauze off completely and examining the wound again. __"__No swelling. I think the infection is going down. And it__'__s not such a bad stitch job__…"_

"_Molly?__" __Sherlock said, and she looked up for a moment into his eyes, as the flutter became a burn that burrowed to her belly. __"__I want you to know__—__that is__…__I need to tell you__…"_

_In the dim light from the hallway, his eyes were graphite cast, but there was nothing cold or hard about his gaze as he fixed it on her. She felt herself melt as he lifted a hand to cup the side of her face._

"_I know this is not what we planned,__" __he told her. __"__And I know it__'__s very dangerous for us both. But I need you to know that__…__that I__'__m glad. To have you. To be here.__"_

_She blinked slowly and pressed against his hand, reaching up to grasp it with her own. __"__Sherlock,__" __she whispered._

_Her shock when he leaned over between them and kissed her, fully, on the lips, manifested as a gasp smothered against him. Warmth emanating from his mouth gave her strength, and she wondered if he felt the same until she heard it, a sound__—__a groan? a growl?__—__emanating from the base of his throat right before he pushed against her, his lips softening and parting, and then she _knew_ he felt it, too. He brought his other hand up to her face, tilting his head to lock his lips against hers, deepening as their tongues met__…_

_Molly__'__s eyes flew open and she pulled away. Her hand replaced his lips against hers; she held her fingers there as if in pain. __"__I__'__m sorry,__" __she whispered against her fingertips as heat flushed her cheeks and pooled between her legs._

_Stunned, Sherlock gripped the edge of the bed with one hand and scratched the top of his head with the other. __"__No, no it__'__s my fault. I__'__m the one who__—"_

_She smiled as best she could, her mind reeling, and remembered her purpose there: with trembling fingers, she reapplied the bandage and taped it to his side, carefully ignoring the taut muscles beneath her hand or the telltale evidence of his arousal__…_

"_There,__" __she whispered. __"__All set.__"_

"_Molly__—"_

"_No need, Sherlock,__" __she said as she stood up and collected her supplies then rested a hand on his shoulder. __"__Get some rest. I__'__ll see you in the morning.__"_

_With that said, she slipped from his room__—__her room, really__—__and into the hallway. __"__Good night,__" __she said behind her as she shut the door, not waiting for his response._

* * *

29 December 2014  
Unknown Location  
Night  


Molly opened her eyes and didn't immediately register her surroundings or situation. When she did, however, her heart sank. Snippets of the last day—_…__has it been a day? Two days? It feels like weeks__…_—rushed back to her as the stiffness in her shoulders, pain in her wrists and ankles, and throbbing headache confirmed that she was, still, held captive by Moriarty.

As her eyes opened fully and she took stock of her surroundings, she spotted her captor leaning against the door, ankles crossed in front of him. "Wakey wakey, Sleeping Beauty," he cooed as he pushed himself off and strode to the bedside. "I trust you slept well?"

She groaned against the fabric still clamped between her teeth. Moriarty made a show of straining to hear her, to understand her words, but brushed his hand in front of his face in dismissal.

"Doesn't matter," he said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them gleefully. "We've got to get you ready for your audience!"

He sat on the edge of the bed and flipped her body over so her back was to him. Startled by the sudden movement, she gasped, stiffening her body as she felt his hands on her arms. He began to untie the ropes that had held her prone since he'd deposited her on the bed.

"I don't think I need to remind you of the dangers that face you if you decide to disobey," he said. Her eyes flicked over to the congealed pool of blood still sitting beside the bed, and the drag marks leading away from it, from the man Moriarty had murdered in front of her. Her stomach clenched and she shut her eyes on the memory as Moriarty continued. "But I'll have you know the room is being guarded right now by men armed with deadly force that I've instructed them to use as necessary. Be a sport then and cooperate, and I'll make sure they have no need to use it."

He pulled the rope free from her wrists. Her arms hung limp and useless at her sides. Moriarty then slid his fingers along her cheek to loosen the gag, wrenching it from her mouth and untying it from behind her head. Molly licked her lips, but found her tongue useless in the endeavour. As soon as Moriarty finished loosening the bonds on her ankles, he reached down to the floor and produced a bottle of water and a straw and, upon helping Molly to sit upright, handed it to her. She gratefully accepted, gulping down half the bottle before he pulled it away. "Not too fast," he warned.

She slowed down, relieved at having water at all. "Thank you," she whispered.

"Don't let it be said that I'm a cruel captor," he intoned. "Now…this will _never_ do." He motioned around her body, referencing her clothing. "Would you be a dear and remove your shirt for me?"

Molly resisted.

"I won't ask you again…"

Still, she didn't move, and within seconds Moriarty's hands were on her, ripping the shirt and sending buttons flying. She screamed, hands flying to her chest to cover her semi-nakedness, but Moriarty forced her arms out as he tore the shirt away from her and tossed it to the floor. "Trousers," he ordered. This time, she did as she was told, unbuttoning them and sliding them off her hips. They tumbled to the floor beside her blouse. She drew her knees to her chest, huddling against the cold that invaded the draughty old room.

"Why are you doing this?"

He shrugged. "Boredom, really," was his reply as he took a look at her, shivering in her white lacy bra and pink and purple striped panties. "Quite nice. Mismatched," he shrugged. "But then you were never going to be a Victoria's Secret model, were you?"

He didn't wait for her to answer before instructing her to stand up, which she did. It was then that she noticed the hook hanging from the ceiling, the thick leather cuffs attached to a chain that draped over it…

"Jim—"

He pulled her towards him, holding her against his body. "Come on Molly," he said, lifting one arm one arm up and into the cuff, which he tightened around her wrist before moving onto the other. "This hurts me more than it hurts you."

"But why?" she begged of him.

He pulled her other arm up, and she balanced precariously on her tiptoes as he tightened the second cuff around her wrist. "It's not you I want. It's him. You are…_collateral_."

"Sherlock said you didn't do collateral damage?"

"Not if I can help it," he said. "But when you need to bait a prize winning fish…"

He bent down to the floor and she felt a leather cuff wrap around her ankle, and decided she was having none of it. His words rushed once more into her head—_Disturb equilibrium, surprise him before he has a chance to right himself, focus on the joints and causing movement beyond what is anatomically or mechanically possible and, thus, most painful__—_and she steeled herself, all in a matter of seconds. As Moriarty bent to restrain her other ankle, she kicked her foot, landing a blow to Moriarty's shoulder with the flat upper arch that connected with a _THWACK! _and caused him to stumble back on his heels, where she pulled back and kicked him again, hitting him square in the jaw.

Stunned, he sat there, holding his gaze in front of him for a long moment before standing up to his full height and rolling his shoulders. He clutched his jaw, opening it and moving it side to side before spitting out a wad of blood. Molly froze, her mind blanking. That had been her entire gambit. There was nothing else to do. Fear rose in the back of her throat as Moriarty raised his arm and slapped her, hard, across the face and back again in the other direction.

Molly tasted blood but bit back her cries.

"Feisty," he said, his hand still cradling his jaw. "You know, I'll let that one slide, but if you _ever _do that again, I promise you won't live to regret it."

He yanked her foot down and attached it to the cuff, which she realized was itself attached to a eye hook buried in the floorboards. Rendered completely immobile, Molly began to panic. _No, stop it! Be brave! Have courage! _she ordered herself. Even as Moriarty removed his own necktie, quickly and mercilessly shoving it deep inside her mouth before producing a wide roll of electrical tape, a strip of which he pressed across her lips to secure it, she fought to keep calm. He pressed the tape down across her mouth with his thumbs, then pressed his lips there. Molly whimpered.

"So perfectly compliant!" he beamed. "Look, I'd love to stay and play but I've got a meeting to get to, my dear." He winked at her, brushing some hair away from her face. "Don't go anywhere..."

It was the last thing Molly heard as she drifted away to her own, smaller and less sophisticated, Mind Palace…


	8. Station

****A/N: Sorry for the delay! I've been undertaking some rewrites in the last few days that have taken a weird and wonderful turn, which I hope you all will enjoy! I've also been rather ill, so I haven't had the chance to do anything as quickly as I'd like to. I hope the updates won't be so few and far between! ~ Lynzee005****

* * *

29 December 2014  
Kensington (Olympia) Station  
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea  
7pm

Sherlock stalked the end of the block, where Russell Road met Kensington High Street, for nearly forty five minutes before his meeting was set to begin. Pedestrian traffic from the High Street shops didn't trickle this far west of Hyde Park, and most of the vehicles passing by were buses taking over for the partially closed District and Circle Line trains that weren't set to reopen in full until New Year's Eve; even those only ran once every few minutes, leaving long stretches of time for Sherlock to regroup in relative peace. The quiet stillness of the night—night birds in the trees, echoes of domestic life bouncing along the posh terrace homes that lined the street—helped immensely to calm his frenzied mind.

Not that he wanted to be calm. He _needed_ his anger—at Moriarty, at Mycroft, at himself. But the walk had both rationalized it and sharpened it to a knifepoint that he was in a much better place to wield should he need to.

As he neared the entrance to the above ground station and realized it was closed—one more in a long line of stations affected by the closures—he began wondering if he should have told someone where he was going, if he should have phoned John or asked Lestrade for backup. Not a soul wandered the quiet Kensington streets this late at night; apart from a couple of kids who'd sped off on bikes from the cycle hire near the bollards at the station entrance, he was the only person on Russell Road for blocks in either direction. His phone felt heavy in his pocket; he briefly debated calling for backup.

It was fleeting. Knowing Moriarty, if he even sensed that he was being tricked or set up, he would leave. He may not contact them again; they may lose their greatest chance at ending this, at least before Molly was seriously hurt. Besides, Sherlock could handle himself—he'd stood up to Moriarty before, _twice_, and lived to see another day. The consulting criminal was not ready yet to stop hunting, and Sherlock's death would certainly curb his sport. He knew he'd be safe, and that he had to try.

Securing Molly's safe release was the plan. The rest would have to be improvisation.

Sherlock skirted past the bollards and a handful of security cameras and onto the platform. While his eyes adjusted to the sudden glare of the station lights, he scanned the vicinity for his nemesis. There was not a single person to be seen.

He checked his watch. 6:59pm; he wasn't late. As the top of the hour officially approached, however, the all-too-familiar sound of an incoming Skype call drew Sherlock's attention to the long, brightly-lit walkway that stretched over the tracks. From the ground Sherlock couldn't see what device the sound emanated from, but he knew that there had to be one, and that it was meant for him. Curious, he ran his eyes up and down the length of the station, north and south, to confirm that he was still, in fact, the only person there. No movement from the shadows, no sounds of footsteps.

He made his way to the stairs.

The ringing continued as he took the steps two at a time, gaining the upper level with ease by about the fourth repetition of the familiar Skype call sound. His eyes scanned the well-lit walkway and landed on the object of inquiry: a solitary iPhone sitting in the middle of the concrete path and still ringing, nestled in the soft folds of what was very recognizably Molly's floral print blouse.

Sherlock scanned the station again from above this time, and once again saw that he was alone. Slowly, he approached the handset.

The lock screen listed the incoming call as being from "ME" in big bold letters. Sherlock picked up the handset but ignored the phone as he focused his deductive powers on Molly's shirt, examining it for signs as to the condition of its wearer at the time she was parted from it. The torn section, from where she'd ripped the piece of fabric to leave as a clue, was obvious as its threads hung loose from the ragged edge viscose fibre. Several buttons had been forcibly removed, and the delicate semi-synthetic had come apart at the seam of the right shoulder and along the lower left side where the front and back panels had been stitched together. The garment had been ripped, deliberately, and likely without Molly's consent.

The phone itself was unremarkable; a stock Apple product if ever he saw one. Clearly new, with no scuff marks on its edges and cleanly wiped of fingerprints, it didn't have any obvious signs of having been tampered with or altered, fitted with explosives or some other ingenious device designed to cause harm to him. Sherlock swiped his finger across the phone to answer it, then held it it arm's length in front of him while the video call connected.

The video screen sputtered to life; Sherlock strained to hear as the sound coming through the speakers, garbled around itself, and squinted at the dark and heavily pixelated video before him. "Good to see you, Holmes, old friend," a voice sounded over the crackling 4G connection.

"I wish I could say the same."

"No love lost then?"

"No, I mean I literally can't see you."

"Oh, well that's a shame," the man said, his facial features obscured by digital haze on the small screen. "Bothersome technology, isn't it?"

"Quite," Sherlock returned.

The video flickered, disappeared for a moment, then flashed back to life. Only the faintest silhouette from the shoulders up could be seen—no identifying marks were available to help pinpoint exactly who Sherlock was talking to. But even without visual confirmation, there was little doubt who it was. The voice, coming in over the mobile network, was tinny and small but in spite of that there was a cadence, an accented lilt, that Sherlock recognized as Moriarty's the instance he heard it.

Sherlock stood up taller, confident in his deduction. "Where is she?"

Moriarty wagged his finger at him, the dull shadowed hand lifted beside his face. "Ah ah ah! Sherlock, you know better than that!" He _tsk__'__d. _"Ever the premature ejaculator. What _does_ Molly see in you anyway?"

Sherlock bit his tongue.

"Molly remains under lock and key…and rope…for the time being," Moriarty replied. "She's unharmed. Mostly. And she'll remain that way until I'm done playing."

"Playing?"

"What can I say? I'm in the mood for some fun. And what better way to do that than by ruining your life?"

Sherlock began to suspect that the connection was not the problem; the person on the other end of the call was deliberately hiding his voice and features from Sherlock. But why? _Moriarty put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger_, Sherlock recalled. _If he survived that, surely he would bear the scars. _Was it possible that the man was so vain he couldn't allow his face to be shown?

"You know, Irene Adler was something special," Moriarty continued. "Far more your 'type' if ever you were to have one. Her, I understood. But Molly? Mousey Molly Hooper? What does that girl _possibly _have to interest men of our…_intellect_?"

"She certainly had enough to keep _you_ interested for a time."

"Oh, she gave me what I wanted. And then some. I had to do quite a lot of convincing to get it though," Moriarty purred. "But she was quite a good shag, that one."

Sherlock ground his teeth together as Moriarty continued. "What about you and Molly? What is it about her that keeps you hangin' on?" he said, his voice a lilting sing-song. "Hm? What can Molly Hooper give you? It's obvious what she believes you can give her, what keeps her stringing along behind you like a pathetic mongrel. But what keeps _you _interested? Her beauty?" Moriarty made a face. "Average, at best. Smallish tits. I doubt you even notice she's a girl, so…really…" Moriarty paused. "Is it her talent as a forensic pathologist? Certainly there are more qualified doctors working at any number of hospitals across this city whose labs you could annex. Is it her brains? Her wit?" he scoffed. "I've met mops with more personality…"

"Get to the point."

Moriarty seemed surprise at Sherlocks intrusion. "Keep yer shirt on," he grinned. "This is the best part. Because, you see, I had to wonder about your motives in using her home as your safe house while you were on the run trying to…" he chuckled: "_Dismantle_ my network. Valiant effort by the way, Sherly-baby. Really top-shelf detective work, I must say."

"I'm glad you agree," Sherlock mocked.

"Quite right!" Moriarty laughed. "You have a once-in-a-generation mind. That's precisely why I'm going to have to kill you. _Eventually_. There can't be two of us—it messes with the natural order of things." Moriarty chuckled at his own joke. "No, what I was saying was that...what _was_ I saying?"

"My motive for using—"

"Right! Right...yes, your motives for using Molly's flat as your safe house. An odd choice, what with an army doctor as your best friend and a brother in the civil service. Why shack up with a forensic pathologist? Hmm, I wonder."

Moriarty paused for a spell before continuing. "I figured there was something I wasn't seeing. Something I wasn't counting on. Something I'd missed. And then it hit me: what's the _last thing _you'd expect from a man like Sherlock Holmes? " Moriarty steepled his fingers beneath his chin. "Why, it's feeling. Affection. Dare I say: love. All impossible for someone so steeped in stoicism to appreciate."

"I fail to see how this is relevant."

"Oh, it's everything," Moriarty shot back. "Because once I figured out where your heart resided, it made it all the easier for me to keep my promise to you."

Sherlock's mind raced as he recalled the deck of a darkened swimming pool, his first face-to-face meeting with the man who was to become his nemesis, and his words cursed out with dripping vitriol: _I__'__m going to burn the heart out of you__…_

Sherlock fumed, focusing all his available energy into the effort required to not push his fingernails through the palm of his left hand as he squeezed them ever tighter into a fist at his side.

"I won't be finished with Molly until I know you've been reduced to a writhing, blubbering mass of _angst_ and _emotion_," Moriarty made a face. "I'm going to make you _feel_, Sherlock. Every time I touch her, you're going to know about it…"

Sherlock widened his stance, preparing for a fight. "And just how do you suppose you'll accomplish this?"

"Simple, really," he shrugged.

Sherlock watched as he received a document through the Skype interface; a text bubble asking him to accept or decline the image appeared, and Sherlock tapped the button to accept. The instant he pressed it, before his eyes, a full screen image popped up on the phone. It was Molly, in her undergarments, lashed at the wrists and hanging from a single hook near the centre of the room he assumed must have been the same one as in the photo from earlier that day. Her ankles were bound together and secured to an eye hook in the floorboards; she was standing on the balls of her feet, but she seemed unconscious, her head rolled to the side and resting against the inside of her arm. A wide strip of shiny black electrical tape covered her mouth.

Her pale skin, mercifully, remained unmarked; Sherlock was now more certain that the blood he'd seen in the initial photo was someone else's, and that the large, dark stain near the head of the filthy bed was more than likely the source of it. Someone had died in that room recently and Molly had very likely borne witness to it.

Sherlock tried to temper his reaction. He didn't want his adversary to know how upset he was. But seeing Molly in such a state affected him far more deeply than he'd expected. He swallowed hard. "What are you showing me this for?"

"This is a still image taken from a camera that is currently beaming a real time video of your precious pathologist and which—if I've played my cards right, and let's face it, all I _do _is play my cards right—is available as a live stream on your phone."

Sherlock employed the multi-task feature on the phone and clicked through to the Home page, where he discovered only one app had been pre-loaded—a mobile IP camera viewer.

"It took a little doing," Moriarty could be heard. "But everything you need to discover her whereabouts and save her is in frame. And—here's the thing. _God_ it's really so elegant!—I've had my people configure it so that every time you log on a little itty bitty notification will pop up on my phone telling me you're watching. So that's when I'll pay Miss Molly a visit. And not for tea."

"Moriarty—"

"So every time you watch, while you scour the video for the clues you need to be her hero, I will be…_applying pressure_, shall we say. Right in front of your very eyes."

Sherlock felt the knifepoint of his anger needling its way out of him. "You wretched…"

"You'll come around eventually," Moriarty said. "Look, I'd love to stay and chat, but I've business to attend to and I imagine you have a video to watch."

"Let her go, Moriarty," Sherlock demanded. "You can take me in her place. It's me you want, not her."

The criminal mastermind was undeterred. "Where's the fun in that? No, no. I'm enjoying the thought of watching you dance way too much to cut to the final number so soon."

Sherlock shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "You can't hide forever, Moriarty. I will find you."

"How cute," Moriarty said through what sounded like a grin. "But no, you won't. You'll play the game exactly as I've said. It's really very fair. If you slip up, my men have been instructed to lock the doors on little Miss Hooper and torch the piece. It's a right tinder box, you know, lots of old wood and kerosene lying around."

Sherlock stammered, faltering, unsure of his footing all of a sudden. "Bastard."

Moriarty laughed. "Isn't this exciting?" he asked. "I really plan to ring in the New Year with a bang!"

The man made a kissy-face sound as he continued to laugh and ended the call; the screen on the phone went blank.

Sherlock wanted to shout and rail but did neither. He dropped the iPhone into his other pocket and closed his eyes, taking deep, even breaths as he waited for a kind of calm to settle over him. _You can do this, _he told himself. _You can figure this out. _

He walked, nearly from one end of the overpass to the other. The way he saw it, he had options. He could watch the video, or he couldn't. Watching it meant Molly would be at Moriarty's mercy; not watching it meant she might not make it home.

_I won't play the game, _he thought. _I won't access a video that puts Molly in danger the minute I start watching. S__urely there have been enough clues so far to help me figure it out without this..._

_There has to be some other way._

Sherlock finally huffed, coming to a standstill in the middle of the walkway. Abruptly, he sat on the concrete, shut his eyes and steepled his fingers beneath his chin—as he always did—as he attempted to take himself through the hallways and passages of his mind. He began in a sterile mortuary lab—not the lab at Bart's, not a replica of a physical place, but a familiar enough place that made sense in the context of the memories of the life he stored there.

_Hers. Her _life.

Every door and every drawer and every cupboard and closet and file folder sitting on every surface held a memory of _H__er. _But unlike the room for most of his acquaintances, neat and organized and exactly as full as it needed to be, hers was cluttered, overstocked. He'd deleted nothing. Her precise height and weight marked off by the specimen scales near the centre of the room; the exact name of every bottled hair colour and all of her favourite perfumes filling vials in a rack beneath the window; her favourite foods from all her favourite restaurants filled a lunch bag and polystyrene take-away containers on the desk; her favourite movies and books lining a few Swedish-made bookshelves behind the desk. Her favourite ways to spend a lazy Sunday, categorized on index cards and the wall calendar hanging on the wall. In a small yellow box beneath the window, the exact lilt of her laugh, the way her nose crinkled and her eyes watered, the feel of her hand on his; in the cold chambers lining the far wall, each and every ex-boyfriend, save one.

Then there were her clues, each one, categorized and placed on a slide under a microscope along the lab bench in the centre of the room. A computer in the corner storing every image—the ones Moriarty had sent and the ones he'd seen with his own eyes, of her flat and the roads she'd walked on the way there and of the white Toyota—available for immediate retrieval.

Except they weren't. Sherlock scanned the room and found, to his horror, that there was nothing in the room he could use. No drawers in the desks or lining the filing cabinets. There was nothing to open, nothing to explore. Every word he could make out was blurred, like seeing through eyes opened too early in the morning. The slides remained out of focus; the computer was inaccessible, its screen frozen.

He fumbled and left the room, into the hallway that led to more rooms, each one set aside for someone. John's room was immaculate; Lestrade's was sparse but readable. So was Mrs. Hudson's, Mary's, Anderson's, Angelo's, the barista at the coffee shop that morning, the last four cab drivers he'd encountered. Each infinitely more comprehensible than the crowded lab at the end of the hall.

It was as if his mind had, literally, gone blank.

He'd only felt like this once before: the day he'd met The Woman. Deduction skills stymied, he'd been unable to figure anything out about the elusive and beautiful woman in front of him. Now he was experiencing the same thing about Molly when he should have been able to pull up exactly what he needed to find her, at the very moment when she needed him the most.

Sherlock's deep-seated sigh ripped itself from his larynx as he opened his eyes and stared out over the tracks leading northwest towards Shepherds Bush. His disappointment in himself weighed him heavily down. The cold winter winds swept down the long rail corridor and whipped his hair, bringing the scent of rain to his nostrils. He stood up, pulling his coat around him and tightening his scarf with cold hands before plunging them into the deep pockets at his hips.

The cold metallic iPhone felt like a blade in against his fingers. He lifted it from the depths and stared at it for several long seconds before swiping to unlock it and bringing up the Home screen. The single application gleamed in the top corner of the page. All he'd have to do is click it, or so he'd been told, and he'd have instant access to the room where Molly was held. A lifeline, leading directly to her.

It was almost too easy...Moriarty wasn't going to let this be the end of it.

But it was, in this moment, the best option.

"Thirty seconds," he told himself, thinking of Molly on the other end of the line, the notification Moriarty was going to get, whatever insult he was preparing to hurl at her vulnerability. "No longer than thirty seconds…"

He pressed it.

The app screen loaded. Slowly. Painfully slowly. But when it did, Sherlock steeled himself for what he knew was coming. He started his countdown.

30…29…28…


	9. Moonlight

29 December 2014  
Somewhere in London

Moriarty pulled his hand away from between Molly's legs and wiped them on her panties as her body's convulsing slowed. "Good girl," he whispered.

Her eyes were bloodshot from crying; she was furious at her body's betrayal. In a fit of anger and shame, mustering what physical strength she could, she screamed her frustration against the gag.

Moriarty just laughed. "You know, Molly dearest, in all our times together—and we had a few, didn't we?—you never let me do _that_ to you. Why is that?"

She closed her eyes, struggling against the leather straps holding her in place. She'd been there for hours like this, and her shoulders ached. She twisted, barely able to stand on her own, pulled up so high that only the balls of her feet remained in contact with the ground; she bore most of her body weight by her arms alone. It hurt. _This is like military torture, _she thought to herself, trying to retreat back to the calm place in her mind...

But Moriarty drew her back. "I have a theory," he said as he came closer to her, running a finger up from her armpit to her elbow and back again. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but...you've been rather judicious in your choice of sexual partners in the—how long has it been? Almost a decade?—while you harboured this _inane_ crush on Sherlock Holmes. Haven't you? Been judicious I mean?"

He walked around her, kicking at crumbled pieces of plaster on the floor and gazing up at the wood beams in the ceiling. The single, dim lightbulb hanging from the rafters was no match for the strength of the moon that shone down through the windows at the end of the room, spilling light across the floor where the lightbulb couldn't reach. Moriarty stalked the edge of light and shadow, skipping along the moonbeam's frayed perimeter. "No wonder you kept such a large box of sexual aids in your dresser drawer," he teased, running a hand along her backside. "Do you still have that one? With the..._thingy _on the end?" he grinned, twirling his fingers in imitation of the device he referenced. Molly shut her eyes as an irrational blush rose to her cheeks. He chuckled. "Yeah, I thought you might. When you love an unfeeling machine, battery-operated toys can take on quite _fetishistic_ properties."

He grinned as he came to stand in front of her again. "Now I can't speak for every bloke you've been with, but I know the difference between a casual blowjob and one given by a girl who practices it in the hopes of placating her dates so they don't ask her for more. Which one did you give me, Molly? Did you blow me to keep me from bedding you?"

As he spoke, he pressed his hand once again to the juncture of her thighs, fingers delving with furious insistence towards the still-sensitive nub he'd only just finished moving against. She cried out and tried to swivel her hips away. Moriarty simply cackled.

"'Course none of that stopped me from trying. And eventually you gave it up. Right before you dumped me, if I remember correctly." He faked-frowned. "I bet I was the first shag you'd had since you met the World's Only Consulting Detective. Wasn't I? You can tell me. No one can hear you—except Sherlock, if he's watching." Moriarty gestured to the camera.

Molly shut her eyes against the tears and steeled her thoughts, bending them towards the man she knew was coming for her. _This isn't about you, Molly,_ she told herself. She'd heard the conversation Moriarty had had with Sherlock. Moriarty's malice aforethought notwithstanding, she knew that this whole endeavour had nothing to do with any inherent hatred towards her; rather, his words—_I'm going to make you feel, Sherlock_—had been quite clear in their intent.

_This is about Him._

Molly found courage, somehow, with the thought of Sherlock and the state he must be in, and a surge of protectiveness coursed through her. She knew she had to be brave for him. Because Moriarty was right: he could be watching. So she would be strong, resilient, for him.

Moriarty circled her again and as she came face-to-face with her tormentor, she summoned the considerable grit and fired daggers at him through her eyes, concentrating the power she channelled from that place of defensiveness.

_You won't break me. And I won't let you break him..._

"You were so careful to avoid the appearance of impropriety. The lies I know you told—to him, to yourself." He pouted. "We could've had something _special_, Molly Hooper. But that was all kiboshed out of some misplaced sense of duty and loyalty to a man who can't feel the same things in return."

Moriarty reached over and cupped her face in his hands. Instead of wrenching her face away—as she instinctively wanted to do—she focused the energy in her stare. He smiled and patting her cheek before letting her chin drop. "You're a different girl, Molly. But we're all different than we were all those years ago, aren't we. What's changed about _you_?" he menaced, hiding rancor behind a smile.

"Tell me—in _grunts_—exactly how many times have you _been with _Sherlock Holmes?"

* * *

29 December 2014  
Somewhere in Central London  
8:30 pm

**Baker Street. ASAP. -SH**

The command was no different than hundreds of others he'd sent out to John in the years since they'd first met. But tonight his edict carried with them a harsh urgency that Sherlock was sure wouldn't translate over text message. He considered phoning, but sitting in the backseat of a cab whilst carrying on a personal conversation seemed to Sherlock a bit crass, no matter the topic but _especially _because of this one.

To be sure, he sent a second text, replete with uncharacteristic punctuation:

**Urgent ! ! !**

Seconds later, the soft vibration in his hand alerted him to John's reply.

**This could literally not have come at a worse time...**

Sherlock frowned:

**Is Mary going into premature labour?**

Buzz:

**No**

He sighed:

**Then this is literally not the worst time. You're being dramatic.**

Buzz:

**I'M being dramatic?! Three exclamation marks?**

Sherlock stared out the window through prismatic raindrops streaking by on the glass, filled with streaks of red taillight and cool blue moonlight as they passed beneath a break in the cloud cover. They were in the shadow of the Royal Albert Hall; traffic wasn't too bad. He figured he'd be home in less than ten minutes.

_Ten minutes. Add that to the three minutes you wasted watching grainy camera footage..._

He looked past the raindrops, trying to block out the mental images he had already locked away. All he could envision, however, was the sight of Molly's battered body, trussed up on a meat hook, bound and gagged while Moriarty delivered his sickening blows. Tauntingly. Laughingly. No matter how hard Sherlock tried, he couldn't block it out. Moriarty had hit her ankles and legs with and paddles and billy clubs; he'd whipped her back and stomach with leather straps. He had slapped and punched her, her body bruising where it had already been welted. He had pulled her hair and dropped heated wax down her arms, the insides of her thighs, the tops of her breasts. He'd doused her with water, hot and cold, and Sherlock had watched as her skin darkened where it was alternately cooled or scalded. There was a different implement every time Sherlock logged on, but the crazed laughter and methodical action was always the same.

Six times he'd logged on to the app in the phone Moriarty had left him. Six thirty-second intervals. And he'd gotten nothing.

Molly appeared to have been drugged or had at least entered the kind of dissociative state that allowed her to withstand the ordeal she was being subjected to. But that fact did nothing to pacify Sherlock. He was failing her with every minute she had to spend wherever she was.

He looked back to his phone:

**For Molly. Please.**

The longer he stared at the message window, the more time seemed to dilate around him. He tapped his foot against the floor of the cab—an attempt at grounding himself in reality—as he waiting for John's reply. When it finally appeared, he heaved a sigh of relief:

**On my way.**

He leaned against the headrest and tried to relax for the rest of the journey home.

_Home..._Sherlock sighed.

He wasn't going home.

Home wasn't a place anymore.

It hadn't been for a very long time...

* * *

5 May 2012  
Bethnal Green, East End  
Night

_Sherlock was leaving in the morning, boarding a train at St. Pancras bound for France. He had a job to do, and after more than two weeks of recuperation with Molly, it was time to finish it._

_The only problem was that, since The Indiscretion over a week earlier, he hadn't been able to think of anything else. It was unlike him; highly irregular and irrational. But it couldn't be helped; when he woke up in the morning, her face was the first one he wanted to see; when he closed his eyes at night to sleep, it was the very last thing he saw. _

_Making this considerably worse was that Molly had changed. She hadn__'__t been avoiding him, per se. But she hadn__'__t been warmly receptive either. Her words to him were clipped, hesitant. She didn't look him in the eye when she talked. __When they cooked__—__together, often, because Molly was rubbish at it and Sherlock had had enough burned toast and scorched eggs to make him never want to eat breakfast again__—__he__'__d watch her tense when he walked near her. It was all he could do to forget about those moments__—__suddenly painful because they were forbidden to him__—__when she used to laugh at the silly things he said, or scolded him under her breath. The sudden, surprising pang in his stomach when confronted by the stony silence she__'__d surrounded herself with was unbelievably unbearable._

_It wasn__'__t the worst part. That was reserved for her morning getting-ready-for-work routine, starting with the radio in the kitchen playing Top 40 songs he__'__d never heard but to which she knew all the words. It hadn't changed in those nine intervening days, but it had taken on the tone and colour of something strange and foreign to him. She was tone deaf and couldn__'__t sing to save her life, but the sound of her voice raised in song was suddenly heaven to him and he had no idea why. She__'__d feed Toby and talk to him in that voice normally reserved for infants, and the temporary arrhythmia in his chest caused rapid breathing and sweating palms and sent him into a panic more than once over the thought that he might be suffering myocardial infarction. When he heard her showering in the morning, on the other side of the wall from the bed, he imagined her standing under the warm water, envying the spray and the soap suds their closeness against her skin._

_When he__'__d awaken in the middle of the night to the sound of the television, still on long after she'd fallen asleep, he'd make his wandering way down the hallway to the living room to turn it off, and he__'__d watch her sleep. For hours, sometimes. Always sitting in the armchair across from her. __He__'__d study her REM patterns. He heard and catalogued her slumbering whispers__. He learned about her tendency to drool, and her habit of needing her head covered by blankets but not her feet if she was to sleep soundly. He__'__d listen to her breaths and swear he could hear her heartbeat._

_And then he__'__d tell her his secrets, because it was the only time he could talk to her. He told her__ things she couldn__'__t have known about him, more painful than the things she already knew, about the demons he__'__d fought the first time he needed her, back when she barely knew him but still somehow knew him deeper than anyone else ever had. He told her things he__'__d told no one, the parts of himself he__'__d locked away so deeply in his Mind Palace that sometimes even he forgot where they are. Things about his childhood and his family, memories of his schooling. About how tired he was when he kissed her, but how maybe that was a much better indication of where he ought to be rather than the over-analytical headspace in which he usually resided..._

_The night before, however, he'd slipped up, as even great minds can: Sherlock told her that he missed her. He told her that he__'__d always thought she was brilliant, even as a pathology intern, because his own brother had missed the signs of his addiction and it only took her sharing a lab bench for one week to deduce it. He confessed that being so close to her, confined to the same living space and not being able to talk to her or touch her had pushed him to his breaking point._

_And then he told her he loved her._

_Or, that he thought he loved her._

_Or maybe just the _idea _of her. _

_But not just that..._

_He at least told her he wasn__'__t sure anymore, and that that fact frightened him more than ever. So he told her that, too. Because it used to be there was nothing he wasn__'__t sure about, and all of a sudden he__'__d kissed her and now he wasn__'__t even sure of his own name. She deserved to know that she was the reason his brain was mush._

_If only she would talk to him__…_

_On this day, __what would end up being his last night at her flat, __standing next to her at the kitchen sink, elbow-deep in soap suds, with a scouring pad in one hand and a pot in the other as he did the dreaded washing up—a conciliatory gesture on his part that he hoped would melt the ice between them if it wasn't too little too late—he finally reached the breaking point. Molly stepped into the kitchen, carrying the last of the dirty dishes from the living room. Sherlock set his implements down and turned to her._

"_Molly__—"_

_"Look, Sherlock, let's just pretend it didn't happen," she offered, apropos of nothing—which, to Sherlock, meant she was thinking about it too._

_"What didn't?" he played dumb._

_She didn__'__t fall for it. __"__It was a momentary lapse and it doesn__'__t have to get in the way of our friendship or__…__whatever__…__this is.__"_

_Sherlock scrubbed the burned on soup from the bottom of the pot with the scrubber in his right hand. "I don't think that's entirely possible."_

"_It__'__s not?__" __she asked, a slight panic rising in her voice._

_"__No, it__'__s not. Because__…__well, Molly, you see__…" __he struggled with how to phrase it. There were so many things about him that he had trouble explaining to neurotypicals. __He looked down at the sudsy water. __"__You see, Molly, there are memories I have that I sometimes need to delete. I erase them. And then they__'__re gone. I don__'__t have them anymore.__"_

_She didn't say anything for a long moment but picked up a dry dish towel and began to wipe the plates Sherlock had already washed, which dripped in a rack beside the sink. "How do you delete memories?__"_

_"__That__'__s not the important part,__" __he snapped before sighing and resetting himself. __"__Molly, kissing you is a memory that__—apart from its __confusing and worldview-shattering nature__—__is entirely different. Undeletable,__" __he said, fairly certain and more that a little disturbed that he was making up words at this point. __"__Which is to say__…__I don__'__t want to forget it. Ever.__"_

_Molly__'__s hands slowed down as she polished water beads off of the dinner dishes and stacked them beside the sink. __"Worldview shattering?__"_

"_And you should know, despite what you and John and Mycroft may think, while I__'__m not professing to be an historic lover, I have had quite numerous and enjoyable sexual encounters in my past and__—"_

_CRASH!_

_Sherlock turned to look Molly, who had dropped the plate she was holding in her hands to the tile countertop, where it shattered into dozens of shards that peppered the counter and fell into the sink beneath the suds. Molly stared down in shock, and as she started retrieving pieces, Sherlock reached over to touch her hand._

"_I__'__ll tidy up,__" __he said._

"_Sherlock?__"_

"_I hope these weren__'__t expensive dishes__—"_

"_I-I heard what you said. When you thought I was sleeping last night...I heard you.__"_

_Aghast, Sherlock's eyes widened. He felt a burning sensation in the pit of his stomach and wondered why his face was suddenly heating up. "Molly..."_

_"Do you really think that?"_

_"What?"_

_"Do you only _think_ you love me?"_

_Her eyes, flicked up to his, made his his heart, already agitated in his chest, begin to throb. He felt his stomach burning and his knees giving out on him. "Actually, Molly, I think I might be sick..."_

_Molly took an instant to rewind her emotions back within herself, standing up straight and tall as she suddenly morphed from Molly Hooper, temporary bolt hole owner, to Molly Hooper, medical semi-professional. "Sit down?"_

_He shook his head, bracing his hands against the counter._

_"What's wrong?" she asked._

_"I have this feeling that I've never felt before," he said, lifting a shaky hand and pointing to his chest. "An ache, but not really. Like there's a flock of birds trying to break free from my ribcage. I think I'm having a heart attack."_

_She furrowed her brow in deep concern. "Do you have any pain? Numbness? Tingling?"_

_He shook his head. "Not really. Weakness. My head doesn't feel right. I can't think."_

_"Anything else?"_

_"My knees," he said. "Why do they feel like jelly?"_

_Molly looked him up and down, and Sherlock__—holding his breath__—shut his eyes and counted to five. _

One...am I having a heart attack?...Two...she'd better not be looking at you when you open your eyes...Three...is she still looking? probably not_..._Four...symptoms aren't right for a heart attack_—_more like a panic attack...Five...panic attack?

Panic attack.

_Sherlock remembered the day very early on in their cohabitation when John had come home after meeting Julia, the very first of his Baker Street girlfriends. He'd been drumming up the courage to ring her all day, and had finally settled on a text message that Sherlock had convinced him was entirely appropriate but which it took her nearly fourteen hours to respond to. In that time, John had gone through an irrational series of fits__—from announcing with certainty that Julia's lack of a reply meant she hated him to going over the exact path of their conversation on the Tube that afternoon, complete with an analysis every inflection and shade of meaning behind each and every word she spoke, as remembered by John. At one point, he'd started to sweat profusely and his breathing grew laboured; Sherlock had nearly phoned for an ambulance, but John had convinced him this was an entirely normal reaction to being in the first throes of romantic passion. Sherlock had long before sworn off the idea of romance; seeing John, a blubbering mess on 221B parlour floor, had only solidified his position._

_Now, however..._

_Sherlock slowly opened his eyes and saw that Molly was, indeed, staring at him. He pushed the onslaught of fear over his symptoms to the back closet of his mind. He was in control, willing his body to resume normal functioning, which it struggled to do. He persevered._

_"What did you ask me?"_

_"Hm?" Molly said, arching her eyebrows. "I'm sorry, ten seconds ago you're in the midst of a bleeding heart attack and now__—"_

_He barged ahead. "You asked me if I only think that I love you. I think a lot of things about you. I think you're awkward. I think you can't cook. I think you have questionable taste in both clothing and men, so if you still feel even a small percentage of your previous affection for me, I have to wonder about my own character..."_

_She flinched, frowned, and took a half step back. "Is _that_ all?"_

_He shook his head. "I also _know_ that you're warm, and generous. I know you're kind to others, almost to a fault. I know you have tremendous strength and bravery. I know you're capable, brilliant, accomplished," he told her, watching as her frown both deepened and changed, somehow, softening until it was something closer to confusion than hurt. He cleared his throat. "And I know that sweaty palms and weak knees and heart palpitations are an entirely normal reaction to the first throes of romantic passion, so..."_

_"What?" came her breathless reply. "Sherlock, what are you telling me?"_

_"Molly, I...I don't have the words to...what I mean to say is: I really don't understand...but I'm _trying_..."_

_She stood there in front of him, and he __considered her, _really _looked at her__—__her hair tied in a messy bun at the nape of her neck, untameable flyaways coursing out from the crown of her head, makeup tired after the long day it had seen her through, wearing a dark blue long-sleeved t-shirt rolled up to the elbows mismatched with a pair of pale green cotton pyjama shorts on the bottom__—__and thought her suddenly the most beautiful woman he__'__d ever chanced to lay his eyes upon. He reached his hand up to touch her face and left a trail of soap suds in the wispy tendrils marking her temple._

_Overcome, and with his words failing him anyway, he kissed her, not caring about the suds or the broken dish as he stepped into the gap between their bodies and fit her into his arms, his lips slanting across hers. For what felt like several long moments that was all they did: frozen still, pressed against each other. But then Molly sighed, or seemed to sigh, and the ice melted, and he hauled into his arms and pushed her against the countertop. She wrapped her legs around his waist and they tumbled blindly through the flat, making their way by feel alone to the bedroom. He pushed her against the door, fumbling for the knob with his hand while she tangled her hands in his hair._

_He kissed her neck, a trail of heat from her clavicle to her jaw. __"__If you heard, then why didn't__—__?__"_

"_You__'__re kind of on an important mission. I didn__'__t want to be a distraction,__" __she breathed between kisses._

_He broke free. "Not talking to you...not touching you..._that_ was the distraction."_

_She crushed her lips to his again and sighed against his mouth as he found the doorknob, and together in the dark they found the bed, graceless and inelegant in their desire for one another._

_He laid her out beneath him and she made quick work of the buttons on his shirt, tugging it up from the waist of his trousers and tossing it to the floor while he worked her shirt off her arms. A sudden concern for his well-healed stab wound drew Molly away for a split second, but Sherlock__'__s hands slipping over the waistband and pushing her shorts down over her hips brought her back to attention._

"_I can__'__t believe this is happening__…" __she whispered as he ghosted his lips across the tops of her breasts._

"_Believe it,__" __he replied, his mouth on hers._

_He could feel her heart beat in her lips, and again when he counted the inches from her jaw to her neck, and yet again when he kissed a path from her solar plexus to her navel and back again before slicking two long fingers inside her, and then he could feel it there, too, pressing and pulsing around him. Molly gasped, fisting the bedsheets on either side of her head as he drew his name and deified cries from her throat. He planted kiss after kiss along her collarbone and the tips of her own fingers as he curled and uncurled his digits inside her. She writhed and mewled on the bed beneath him, his practiced movements belying a certain kind of experience that had come as much from first-hand knowledge as it had from the contents of various adult websites accessed through private browsing sessions late at night when no one was home..._

"_Sherlock, I__—"_

_Her breath hitched again and she shut her eyes, and he could feel her starting to clench around him, bearing down before the inevitable climax was reached. He slowed his pace, deliberately, and freed his hand to her dismay only to free himself from the confines of his trousers._

_She lay there, panting against her bedsheets; spring moonlight slanted in from her bedroom window and poured over her skin, pooling in the valley between her breasts and the juncture of her milk-white thighs. She reached her hands up to his hair and combed errant curls from his forehead only to have them flop over once again. She smiled, lazing her eyes closed and he breathed a trail of wet kisses from the peak of one breast to the other, dancing his lips through moonbeams._

"_Molly?__" __he asked. He wanted to ask her if she was sure, if she really wanted this, because it was suddenly the only thing in the world that _he _wanted and he was prepared to do anything to get it and bring it to the both of them. But if she needed an out, if she was uncomfortable or had changed her mind or was having even the tiniest of second thoughts, he wouldn't hesitate to stop...__"I'm not...that is, I'm really no catch__—__"_

_"No catch?" she asked, cupping the side of his face. "Let me be the judge of that..."_

_Then she lifted her head off the pillow to meet his and reached down along his stomach, and wrapped her hand around the length of him. The shock of it__—__the pure electric shock__—__was very nearly his undoing. As she spread her knees and he knelt between them, without breaking away from the gaze he__'__d initiated, he buried himself within her._

_Slow, languid pulls very shortly turned frenetic as Molly__'__s climax shattered over her, devastating her. She rode out the pulsing waves, muscles shuddering around him, and he dropped his head to her shoulder, thrusting twice before pouring himself within her, her name on his lips, his lips against the damp skin of her neck._

_They lay there in perfect stillness for several minutes, breathing heavily, sweat beading and standing up on their skin against the cool air of the room. Molly tangled her fingers through Sherlock__'__s curls and kissed the top of his head; he turned his face and lay his cheek against her chest._

"_Your heartbeat,__" __he intoned. __"__I can hear it.__"_

"_Reassuring,__" __she giggled. __"W__as a bit worried there. S__'__good to know time stopped but my heart didn__'__t.__"_

_He sighed and kissed her breast, then pushed himself up to eye level once again, their bodies still joined. __"Molly, I leave in the morning."_

_"I know"_

_"And I don__'__t know how long I__'__ll be gone,__" __he kissed her softly. _

_"I know."_

_He kissed her again. "__I needed you to know how I felt, but I can__'__t ask you to wait for me.__"_

"_I will, though.__"_

"_But you shouldn__'__t,__" __he said. __"__I__'__m not__…__built for this.__"_

_Molly's grin was devilish, dangerous. _"_You seem very good at it."_

"_You know what I mean.__"_

_She nodded, softening as she smoothed her thumb over his eyebrows and the creases that knit them together above the bridge of his nose. __"Stop worrying, Sherlock...__"_

_He kissed the tip of her nose. __"But __I may not be able to give you__—"_

"_Sherlock,__" __she said, quite seriously, as she stroked his face with her hands, combing strands of hair away from his piercing eyes. __"__I learned long ago to not ask for anything from you that you couldn__'__t give.__" __She wavered. __"__Granted, at the time, it was a self-preservation method, and it didn__'__t always work, because I've been carrying a torch for you since__—" she stopped, clearing her throat. "__I have to believe with maturity comes wisdom and__…"_

"_Yes?__"_

_She reconnected with his eyes. __"__All I will ask of you is that you come back to me. The rest will be icing on the cake. Just come back to me,__" __she said, adding with a half-grin. __"__In one piece, yeah?__"_

_Sherlock wasn__'__t sure if that was a promise he could keep, however desperately he wanted to. He kissed her, breezing through the quiet stillness of the night with eyes half-closed. He owed her a truth, and spoke it reverently against her skin as he bent his head once more to capture her with a kiss. __"__You have kept me safe through all the long months I__'__ve been away, Molly. You know I'll never let anything happen to you.__"_

_"I know," she giggled._

_"I know you know," he hummed the words against her skin, his deep baritone lingering on the bilabial nasal consonant that began each one, resonant, hoping she__'__d feel it when his lips pressed the skin above her breastbone directly over her heart. __"You're m__mmagnificent__…__mmmarvelous__…__mmmesmerizing__…" __he paused, his lips at the base of her throat, considering for a long moment if what he should say next was entirely appropriate, and then deciding he didn't care if it wasn__'__t. __"__Mmmine. Mmmy Mmmolly.__"_

_She sighed and arched her back against him, pressing the juncture of their bodies and stoking his fire. __"__Yes, Sherlock. I__'__m yours. Ever yours. And you__'__re mine,__" __she whispered, as he took her mouth against his once again._

_In the morning, knowing he had to leave, he woke before her, slipping out of her warm embrace and dressing silently before leaving her a lengthy note. He begged her forgiveness. He implored her to find someone with normal-to-absent sociopathic tendencies with whom she should spend the rest of her life with. He told her he would return to her but didn't promise anything more._

_He signed it: __"Fa__ithfully, always, and with great affection -Your Sherlock"_


	10. Partners

29 December 2014  
Baker Street  
8:00 pm

Exactly nine minutes later, the taxi pulled onto Baker St and Sherlock was not only pleased with his time estimation but also by the sight of John and Mary's Audi parked—illegally—curb side next to the flat. He paid the driver and stepped out into the bitter rain, checking to see if anyone was inside the vehicle and noting that it was empty; John, who still had his keys to 221B, had obviously let himself inside.

Pushing his way through the front door and into the foyer, Sherlock became aware of the sound of two voices in the upstairs rooms, muffled by the floor separating them but still distinct and recognizable: one male, one female. From the tone and speed, he could tell without much difficulty that an argument was taking place.

_John and Mrs. Hudson? _

_No...this sounds personal. Intimate._

_...John and Mary?_

Sherlock took the stairs quietly, catching snippets of their conversation more clearly from the landing just outside the door to the sitting room, which was half-closed. He braced his hand on the railing, taking the weight off of his feet and the creaking floor boards beneath him as he stood and eavesdropped, unashamedly.

"I just came in to use the loo, John," Mary was saying. "I didn't come here to fight."

"Then why are we fighting?"

"I don't know. Because we've got three months of marital bickering to make up for?"

Sherlock found himself holding his breath for fear of being overheard, and slowly—quietly—exhaled before drawing another breath, filling his lungs. Mary's voice sounded clouded, emotional; if he didn't know any better, he would have assumed she was crying. John on the other hand, sounded tired, his voice filled with exasperation.

"Mary—"

"John, I'm going."

"I can go with you."

"No. You can't. You _have _to stay here. You _have _to help Sherlock."

"No, I don't. You're my wife, and—"

"And Molly is in very real danger."

"Sherlock can handle it."

"But what if he can't?" Mary said, her voice thickening with each word. "You don't know what Moriarty has been up to. You don't know what he's capable of doing now, what kind of anger he must have..."

John's voice was accusatory. "What do you know about it?" he said. "No, don't answer that." A pause. "Actually, yes, do answer that. Miss Secret Past? Where exactly have you been, really, these last few days?"

Despite his shock at John's paranoia and distrust of his wife and the amped-up level of fear and anger in his voice, Sherlock continued to hold his ground in total silence on the landing. Mary went silent, save for the sobbing. "John—"

"Mary, I'm—"

But it was too late. Sherlock heard her steps on the hardwood and carefully pretended that he was just coming up the stairs himself, knowing she would burst into the hallway any second. When she did, Mary wasn't looking; she barrelled headlong into Sherlock, who instinctively caught her against him.

"Mary," he said, trying to sound chipper and certain he was coming off too strong.

"Sherlock!" she cried, swiping at her face to dry her tears as she stepped back. "Ah, I was just—"

"Is everything okay?" he asked. "You're crying."

Looking at her, seeing the pain on her face that she was desperately attempting to hide behind a façade of happiness that crumbled under the slightest inspection, Sherlock immediately felt uneasy. His trust of Mary didn't extend as far as it once had, but that wasn't even the whole story. As she struggled not to weep, he began to worry. John was doubting her. John—his emotional and moral compass—who had reconciled with this woman less than a week earlier, was full of dread.

_Why?_

He wasn't sure he had the capacity to be surprised by anything that night until the moment Mary pitched her arms around his shoulders and clung to him, as if she were drowning and he was the life raft. It took a long moment of stunned stillness before Sherlock gathered his sense, wound his arms around her back, under her arms, and squeezed.

"You take care of my husband now," she sniffled against his neck. "Going off on a mission to fight the baddies and get Molly home. Just bring him back in one piece, too."

Sherlock nodded. "Of course..."

She patted his back and gave a small laugh. "You're a good man, Sherlock Holmes. A very good man."

He wanted to say thank you but his voice stuck in his throat, and instead of saying anything he simply watched her walk away down the stairs in silence, his mouth agape.

"Sherlock?" John asked from the door.

The detective turned, listening to the door slam downstairs as he took in the sight of his blogger and friend. John's brow was ridged and furrowed, betraying his mental state; his eyes were shrouded and sad. Fine lines at his mouth belied his clenched teeth, and his stance was even more stiff and angular than usual.

"Everything okay?" Sherlock asked, knowing full well what his answer would be.

John did not disappoint. "Peachy."

"You could have told me no, you know."

John folded his arms across his chest, incredulous. "Right, because that's historically been a surefire way to get you to back the hell off, has it?" he huffed. "Jesus, Sherlock, I did tell you it was a bad time, didn't I?"

"Well, yes, but—"

John sighed. "Look, I'm here. Let's just do this, okay?"

"Do what?"

John waved his hands in front of him. "_Whatever it is you needed me to come over here at nine o' clock in the bloody evening to do!_"

The front door downstairs closed heavy and loud, and it was Mrs. Hudson's voice, weary but strong, that followed it up the stairwell. "Quit stroppin', boys!" she cried. "I'm trying to watch the telly!"

John peered over the bannister. "Sorry Mrs. Hudson," he said.

"Apologies," Sherlock echoed.

Downstairs, the landlady grumbled as she shut her door. "What'll the neighbours think...?"

Sherlock shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the bannister before reaching into the pockets and taking out both cell phones. _Cut to the chase..._ "I've been contacted by Moriarty again," he told John.

"You have?"

He nodded. "This afternoon. He wanted me to meet him in Kensington, so I did, and when I got there all I found was this—" he held out the iPhone. "He rang in. Video call. I've only just come from there."

John took the phone from Sherlock, who trudged into the parlour and sat down on the sofa, shutting his eyes and palming his face, one hand on either side, as he leaned back against the cushions. He sat like that for a long while before sighing and sitting up straight again. "There's an app on the phone that allows me to view footage from a kind of closed circuit camera."

John sat down in his chair, the phone still cradled in his hand. "What kind of footage?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Of Molly..." he said. "Moriarty says every clue I need to find her is in the room, in view of the camera. But every time the app is opened, Moriarty begins a systematic torture session—"

John's fingers hovered over the button on the screen, but Sherlock's words stilled them. He clicked the power button and put the phone to sleep. "Christ..."

Sherlock held out his hand and John placed the cold handset in his palm. "I watched for three minutes. In thirty second intervals," he said. "I wasn't able to find anything. And my Mind Palace is useless. Everything about her is gone. I go there and I can _see _everything, but I can't _do anything _with it. It's like there's a mental block, something I can't penetrate..."

John leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "Sherlock, when was the last time you slept?"

Sherlock scoffed. "You and Gerard, do you share notes?"

"No," John said. "_Greg _and I are merely friends who are concerned about you. And as a doctor, it's my considered opinion that you need to rest, get some sleep and—"

"I can't," Sherlock interrupted. "Not while she's out there. While he's doing—"

John didn't say a thing but watched Sherlock intently for a long moment; Sherlock could feel his eyes on him.

"What, John?"

"This case...it's different. Isn't it? And not just because it's someone we know, either."

Sherlock cleared his throat, eager to shift the light of scrutiny away from himself. "And yet you hurried over here tonight instead of tending to your pregnant and ill wife," Sherlock said. "Shall we talk about how this case is different then?"

John leaned back in his chair. "You know I care about Molly. When you were gone playing hero across most of Europe, she was all I had left," he said, his voice low and rumbling. Dangerous. "Don't you _dare_ make this about me. _Not _tonight."

In the half-light of the darkened parlour, Baker Street streetlamps slanting in across the floor, he could see that John's posture had stiffened again; his breathing sped up, and Sherlock was certain his friend was avoiding his eyes. "John, what aren't you telling me?"

John shook his head. "About what?"

"What is going on with Mary?"

John's eyes shot to Sherlock's face. "What makes you think this is about Mary?" he asked before sighing and throwing his hands heavenward. "Oh, you heard everything then?" With a heavy sigh, he relented. "I had a row with my wife. Is that not okay with you?"

"I don't mean to pry."

"Well you are," John shot back, rocking to the balls of his feet, clenching his fists at his side. "She's angry at me. I think she was doing one of those expecting-me-to-mind-read things where I'm supposed to know what she wants without her actually bloody _telling me anything_," he paused before muttering. "And I don't know why I'm telling you this. Going to Sherlock Holmes for relationship advice is like taking your car to the vet for an oil change."

Sherlock wasn't particularly amused at the analogy. "I think it's fairly simple, John. You should go to her. Be with her."

"It's not that simple," he said. "I only saw her tonight because she came to back home to pack a bag. _A bag, _Sherlock. She's staying with that nurse friend of hers, so she says, ever since everything happened yesterday...and says she's going to stay there until this sordid business with Moriarty gets sorted."

"Laying low," Sherlock said. "Seems wise."

"But I know she's lying to me, Sherlock. She said the two of them were going to acupuncture and pregnancy massage or something. I called her, and she said she was at the spa already, but she was in a _Tube station_. I heard the announcer," he said, distraught. "Why would she lie to me?"

_Maybe it _is_ like taking your car to the veterinarian, _Sherlock wondered as he narrowed his eyes and tried to think of something useful to say. "She could...have been on her way? To...the spa?"

John didn't seem to be listening. "Maybe it's all too little, too late," he offered. "I was fully prepared to throw this all away not long ago, and I made it plain that she was to blame. Maybe I took too long to forgive her...now I'm here, working a case with you..."

The words stung, and John knew it. He shook his head. "Sherlock, I didn't—"

"No, it's fine," Sherlock forced a smile. "It's perfectly acceptable to place your wife first."

John scratched his head and rolled his eyes. He grew thoughtful for a moment before nodding, severely, as if he had just convinced himself of something important. "Mmm...nope, I need to work, and I want to find Molly, really I do. She's in danger. I love Mary. I truly do. But Molly could die, and whatever it is Mary and I are going through will still be here, will still be fixable, when all of this is over."

Sherlock counted the knots in the floorboards, not knowing what to say. "I..."

John cleared his throat. "Look, I was going to ask—er—can I crash here tonight?" he grumbled. "Mary's obviously not going to be home and I hate shuffling around that draughty old place by myself."

Sherlock managed a half-smile as he looked to John. "You don't mind sharing the sofa with Toby, do you? He's quite taken to the end cushion nearest the wall..."

John smirked and shook his head. "Fine. That's just fine. Ta." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Does Lestrade know? About the phone?"

In the still quiet of the flat, and at the mere mention of the man's name, Sherlock dove into deep thought, to the dark place he'd been trying to avoid all night. He saw her body again, not as he once saw it—lively, laughing—but as he had seen it that night. The image seemed burned to his retina.

_Moriarty..._

"Sherlock?"

"Hm?" Sherlock asked, eyes flicking to John with a frown. "No, haven't told him."

"Are you going to?"

Sherlock made a face. "I can't go to him with nothing more than this phone," he said. "He'll want to send it to Cyber Crimes and have them plug it in and do their worst." He gripped the handset. "This is my only lifeline to her."

John scowled. "I'm sure he's not going to break it, Sherlock."

His statement went unanswered as Sherlock clasped his hands beneath his chin.

"Right," John said, "So then...what exactly did you see in the video feed? Anything we can use?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Not much," he admitted. "The room is about twenty meters squared. Too large for a bedroom so likely a parlour or sitting room. There's a bricked up fireplace on the wall opposite the camera. Wood-burning."

John scrambled for a piece of paper and a pen and began scribbling down what Sherlock was saying.

"The walls...they're—erm—made of plaster, not drywall," Sherlock continued. "Moriarty called it a 'tinderbox' so we can likely assume wood framing. There are two windows opposite each other, judging from the light patterns on the floor. I could see streetlight coming in. Doesn't help us orient the room much. Low ceiling. Probably ground floor or half basement. Heavy wooden beams going cross-wise. Strong enough to support her weight—" he faltered.

John looked up, grasping Sherlock's meaning without the need for any more specifics. He pressed his pen back to the paper and finished his thought.

"Molly's skin was goosepimpled," Sherlock said. "I'm guessing there's no heat."

The doctor nodded. "I don't know how you can say that's not much. I'm sure Lestrade and his team can go on this." He scratched his temple with the capped end of the pen. "I mean, plaster walls stopped being used—when?—WWII?" John looked back to his paper. "Might help us rule out some areas devastated in the Blitz, newer areas in the suburbs..."

Sherlock nodded.

"And—and in the morning, maybe, we can get a look at the windows, see which direction the sun is coming from, determine the orientation?"

Again, Sherlock simply nodded.

"And with a wood-burning fireplace, wood-framing...I mean, you can rule out most apartment buildings probably, and—"

"As a doctor," Sherlock interrupted, "In your medical opinion, what kinds of injuries someone might sustain from a rather large bruise along this section of their ribcage?" He ran his hand alongside his left ribs, just below and to the side of his pectorals, aping with his spread out fingers the size and shape of the bruise he'd noticed on Molly's body earlier. The stark image in his head—saved in excruciating detail—was clear and painful to view. He detached himself from the emotion inherent in the act and cleared his throat. "The lungs are there. Spleen too, and kidneys, though those are more to the back. Molly had it, this bruise. Vaguely boot-shaped."

John narrowed his eyes. "Sherlock?"

"Or what about cracked ribs?" Sherlock continued. "What visual signs do they produce? Swelling? Redness? I imagine she'd be in considerable pain."

John set down his pen. "Sherlock, listen—"

"And what do you know about suspension by the arms? It appeared as though she had her feet on the ground a bit, but most of her weight was being borne by the shoulders sockets, I imagine. That's a position that can't be maintained for more than a few hours at most, and—"

"_Sherlock!_"

The detective stopped. He cast his eyes up at his friend. John heaved a sigh.

"None of this is going to help Molly right now..."

"I—I want to be prepared. For when we find her—"

"I'll be there," John said. "She'll have the finest care. And she'll be okay, Sherlock."

Sherlock took a breath, closing his eyes. "I won't believe that until I have her _here_. _Right _here beside me."

For a long moment, the only sound in the room being the _tick-tick-tick _of rain on the windowpanes, ambient building noise—the rumble of a pipe, the creak of wood expanding—and the wail of an ambulance speeding up Baker Street. John, sitting opposite him, didn't not remove his eyes from Sherlock's face.

"This _is _different, isn't it?"

"What is?"

"This case," John said. "Because of Molly. Am I right?"

Sherlock felt his face warm up. "I don't know what you're talking about."

After a long, considerate pause, John nodded. "All right," he said. "Okay. We won't talk about it." He clapped his hands together. "Let's take a look at this phone, shall we?"

Sherlock hoped his gratefulness for the change in subject didn't show on his face, and was glad for the dim light that hid his blush as it faded from his cheeks. He handed the iPhone to John.

"You can learn a lot about a phone from its serial number," said John as he turned the phone on and navigated to the settings.

Of course, Sherlock wasn't sure what, apart from that, could be gleaned from an examination of the phone as it was—with the technological tools and capabilities available to them in the flat at that hour, he wasn't even sure if changing the SIM card was possible—but it was better than going over the same clues, or revisiting his Mind Palace, and coming up empty and frustrated every time. As much as he wanted to go back to the video feed to try again and look for the things he'd missed, he knew that it would be likely be entirely fruitless; the risks to Molly were too great to make another attempt, especially because that's what Moriarty _wanted_ him to do.

Still, he had a certain amount of faith in Moriarty's ability to keep his word. The consulting criminal was a stickler for the rules. That meant that no harm would come to Molly as long as Sherlock's eyes weren't viewing her through the camera's lens...

On top of it all, John's enthusiasm for the task was infectious, and his presence was calming. Half an hour before, the job had felt quixotic; now, he had hope.

"Perhaps there's a way to workaround the app," Sherlock said. "A way to view the room without Moriarty knowing about it."

John's face lit up. "Now you're talking."

Sherlock stood up. They had a game plan. "Right," he said. "Coffee?"

"At this hour?"

But Sherlock was already sitting at his computer, the phone at the ready, ignoring John.

The night had only just begun.

* * *

29 December 2014  
Somwhere in London  
8:30pm

For what seemed to be at least a geological epoch, Molly was mercifully left alone in the room. She tried—and failed—to sleep at first, but then concentrated on seeing what she could of the room, assessing the situation unhindered by fear and the presence of another at her side. Chipping paint on the walls; dark stained wood beams above her head; two small windows on the wall facing her and one behind her, that faced the street. Outside that window, the sound of cars speeding by and rain hitting the panes of glass helped to lull her into a kind of relaxation, connecting her to the world outside the room she was in.

But the pain in her arms and the exhaustion in her body began to betray her and her mind whirred toward panic. The discomfort of her bondage was one thing; the effect of having her arms raised for so long was quite another, as her lungs were constricted and breathing was becoming difficult. The harder Molly tried, the more she panicked, and the harder it actually became.

_I'm not going to die like this..._she commanded, squeezing her eyes shut as she steadied her breathing and willed herself to relax as much as she could.

The door to the room began to creak open, sending her almost-gone panic spiralling into her throat. Moriarty entered first, followed by another man

"Lord," the second man said. "Isn't this lovely?"

Moriarty stifled a chuckle. "I thought you'd say that."

"Can I—?"

Moriarty gestured to Molly's prone body, and the second man lumbered over from the door. Molly watched him, scouring his face, committing his features to memory. He was tall, muscular, with gingery brown hair. He was middle-aged without looking old, with a commanding air about him even as he deferred to Moriarty, who stood behind him, a laughing smile spreading across his face.

The second man ran a hand up Molly's ribs, from the waistband of her panties to the underwire of her bra and back, and Molly winced as his hand grazed the tender bruises there.

"My opinion, sir?" the man said. "We should take her down from the hook."

"You think?"

"Trust me," the other man said. "The human body can only withstand a short number of hours in such a position before permanent damage occurs. That's why it's such an effective torture method."

Moriarty whined. "She just looks so deliciously _perfect_ like this," he said, motioning to Molly. "Wouldn't you agree?"

The second man nodded but cocked his head to the side. "I think she looks better _alive_ than she would if she died like this."

Moriarty considered before whining, "Oh _all right!_"

The second man stepped over to Molly and unceremoniously unclipped her hands from the hook above her head. She tumbled down from her suspended position and fell against the man. "Oh!" the man exclaimed before kneeling to the floor with her in his arms, where he set her down and unclipped her ankles from the floor hook. She took a deep, gasping breath of air through her nose and shut her eyes against the tears of relief that sprang there. Her arms hung in front of her, utterly useless, and her legs were rubber. The man had to lift her to the bed in the corner, where he dumped her, hard, against the mattress. She winced as her beaten, sore back made contact with the stiff bedsprings.

"That's better," the second man said. "Isn't it?"

He came to the edge of the bed and sat down, and Molly did her best to move as far away from him as possible. His disposition was methodical, calculating; from the posh, aristocratic accent to his meticulous way of dressing, she was inclined to believe he had more in common with Sherlock than Moriarty. Moriarty was a loose cannon in comparison to either; but for every carefully constructed sentence or well-thought-out plan of attack Moriarty constructed, Molly would have guessed the other man had ten. The two of them were like night and day.

_More like the different between 11:59pm and midnight..._Molly thought. Despite his touch being the first kind one in days, she didn't trust this new figure in the slightest. Who was he? How did he fit into this plot?

"Come now," the man said, brushing hair—still damp from Moriarty's last go with the water hose—from her eyes and carefully lifting away the tape covering her mouth. It pulled away easily but painfully; Molly winced as he took the tape and tossed it to the ground before fishing out the wadded up fabric behind her teeth. Once removed, her jaw hung slack.

"Jim, is this your necktie?"

"I was angry."

The man's eyes were on her body, covered in welts and bruises. "Nicely done, boss. No grievous internal injuries. Just enough to mar the skin," he said. "Very nice indeed."

Molly was unable to stop the flow of tears that had started with the breath of air she'd inhaled and which had continued through the shock of unexpected pain moments before; ashamed, she tried to force herself to relax. "Let me go," she whispered, her voice thick in her throat. "Please."

"Ssh, pet," the man said. "All in due time. See, I've only just returned from an extended trip to visit my family at our ancestral home in Provence, on my mother's side you see, and—"

Again, Molly pressed her case. "Please...I just want to go home."

The man reached over and continued to brush hair from her face, this time on the other side; Molly shrank from his touch.

"I just want to _admire_ you."

Moriarty chuckled as he leaned on the doorframe, adjacent to the head of the bed. "Be a good sport," he said. "You don't want to see him when he's angry."

Molly stilled her trembling body as much as she could while the second man gaze fixed on her. As she stiffened, the man tsked.

"You needn't be afraid of me."

Her voice was small and hoarse; she relied on her words to carry her anger. "I'm supposed to enjoy this?"

He chuckled. "If you want to..."

Molly grimaced. "Sherlock isn't going to give you whatever it is you want," she said. "And neither will I. You'll have to kill me."

The man _tutted_ and licked his lips. "You're the brilliant one who helped the detective fake his death, is that right?" She didn't reply, but the man grinned anyway. "I've wondered for three long years how you managed to do it. Will you let me in on your secret?"

Molly squared herself with the man perched at the bed's edge. _What is he playing at? _she wondered. It didn't matter, really; the longer she kept him talking, the more time she had to think. She fired back her own response. "How did _you_ fake his death?"

"Blood squibs and a prop gun," the man said, "And the glimmer of hope that Sherlock would be so stunned he wouldn't bother with making sure. He's really very predictable, isn't he, Jim?"

"Yes, very," Moriarty menaced.

Molly considered, lifting her chin in defiance as she rested, small but suddenly powerful, harbouring the information he wanted.

"You turn, Molly."

She licked her lips. "Body double."

The man laughed. "I bet you rather enjoyed helping him out, didn't you?" He steepled his thick fingers—so terribly unlike Sherlock's, she noted, taking back her initial comparison—and hummed as he set his fingertips beneath his chin.

"You're his partner?" she asked. "Jim's?"

"In a sense," the man replied. "I was his second-in-command, the one who took over for him when he went on the lam."

_Someone in the network Sherlock was trying to dismantle, _Molly thought. She forced a swallow, her dry tongue struggling to complete the task. "And now?"

Moriarty interrupted. "Enough questions," he said, and Sebastian reached into his pocket, producing a syringe and a vial.

Molly's eyes widened. "Please, you can let me go. I won't tell anyone. I promise."

"You're right about that," he said as he pierced the top of the vial with the needle point and began filling the syringe with a clear liquid. "But it's not you we're after anyway."

The man licked his lips and ran a hand over Molly's bare arm, goose-pimpled from the cold and damp. Molly grimaced, her hatred for him multiplying exponentially with every horrid second his flesh touched hers. With nary a warning, he plunged the needle into her upper arm and injected. Molly cried out in pain.

He cleared his throat, the sound obscured by an ambulance siren wail outside on the street.

"You'll sleep well tonight," he said as Moriarty shut off the lights, plunging the room into darkness, save for the erratic ambient lights of the mews behind the house, filtering in from outside, strobing across the floor.

Molly felt herself growing sleepy, but she refused to close her eyes as long as the second man was still in the room.

"Tomorrow," she heard him say as her eyes, heavily lidded, began to close shut, seemingly of their own accord. "Maybe you can tell me a little bit about my old Army pal, Doctor Watson?"

_Doctor Watson? _Molly wondered. _How does he know John? What does he have to do with this?_

"Sebastian," Moriarty called, and as she heard the sound of the second man—_Sebastian's_—laugh, the creak of the door, and the retreating footsteps that indicated to her that it was safe to let her guard down.

Molly finally closed her eyes, and fell asleep.


	11. Deductions

30 December 2014  
New Scotland Yard  
Early morning

Sunrise splayed itself over the horizon in the east, reaching its fingers across the earth until the entire city appeared to glow, first in diffuse blues, lightening through greys and, finally, when the sun crested, brilliant yellows and oranges as bright as Christmas satsumas.

Sherlock sat at DI Lestrade's desk, his back to the door, watching as the world lit up at his feet. He'd spent all but a few hours that night poring over the case files that the Metropolitan Police had drawn up. None of it was particularly revelatory, but Sherlock knew that the Yard's resources were vast and not to be underestimated; as he scanned landscape of the city of London from the corner office window, behind him Lestrade worked the phone, on a long distance call to the office of the IP camera app developer in America, attempting to discover the means by which they could source the origin of the Moriarty's camera signal sent to the app itself.

It was plausible, something to go on. But Sherlock remained cautious in his optimism. This was the same police force that had been unable to pinpoint the origin of a simple television broadcast within a single county; orchestrating a sting at this level of technological magnitude seemed far-fetched at best. At worst, Sherlock feared that whatever enabled Moriarty to remotely spy on the phone and to determine when the app was in use might also be able to tell when it was being tapped into by a Seattle whiz kid.

Sherlock had thought when it became clear that tracking the signal was a possibility. Still, he let Lestrade do his work. Something of the cold, dispassionate eye of the detective had returned to Sherlock over the course of the morning's hours. He felt renewed, hopeful even, as his confidence in his own deduction abilities If they didn't find Molly via an elaborate transatlantic GPS hookup,

John, awkwardly asleep in someone's desk chair in the bullpen beyond Lestrade's door, let out an offensive snort as he rolled over in the chair, spinning it slightly until he was facing the office. Lestrade punched a few keys on his desk phone before jabbing a thumb at the doctor.

"Bit uncomfortable, that," he said, pausing for a moment to listen over the phone before eyeing John and then Sherlock once again. "Surprised he's here. He and the missus still not...?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Long story."

Lestrade turned his attention back to the phone, gave an affirmative order, hung up and shoved his hands in his pockets. "It's a go," he said. "We have to go through him, through his server, some mumbo-jumbo about proprietary software. But I've patching him through to someone in Cyber Division who can help set up a network connection between one of our computers and his so that he can run a trace on the signal."

Sherlock nodded. "When can we start?"

"It'll take a little while to set up the connections and patch into the signal. And of course, the app will have to be open and running while he maps it all out."

Sherlock assumed a tone of authority. "You know the _second_ we open the app, it triggers an alarm that goes to Moriarty's mobile. When he knows we're watching, that's when he resumes his—"

Lestrade nodded, his eyes as solemn as his voice. "I know. We'll be as quick as we can, Sherlock. But this is the best we can do."

Sherlock stared back out the window. "What if it isn't good enough?"

Lestrade's voice was soft but insistent. "It has to be," he answered, before growing quiet. For a long moment, neither man said a word. "So...you've watched the video feed?"

"I told you, yes. Six times," Sherlock replied. "Six thirty second intervals. So three minutes in total."

Lestrade shifted his weight from one foot to the other, considering his words before he spoke them. "And you got _nothing_ from it?"

Sherlock averted his eyes. There was no real accusation in the Inspector's voice, no malice or intent to injure. But the question buried itself deep in Sherlock's limbic system, where it had already begun to fester. He didn't want to admit defeat. He didn't want to have to say it out loud that he had nothing to show for what he'd put Molly through in those viewings. He didn't want to acknowledge her misplaced faith, or consider the consequences of his failure.

But he hid the hurt, steeling himself as he often did by steepling his fingers beneath his chin, eyes closed. "What I _do _know is that the phone was made in late November of this year at a factory in China. I know the SIM card inside was purchased in Oxfordshire—near Burford—about two weeks ago, and that the phone has been preloaded with enough data—several gigabytes at least—to enable frequent high speed file transfers over the cellular network on a pay-as-you-go plan that likely had to have been connected to a credit card. Don't bother looking into it—my guess is it's either a stolen card or a prepaid one, so you won't get a trace on it. The phone is loaded with a data plan only, no airtime. It was turned on shortly before I picked it up last night at seven o'clock. The internal GPS locator, which is it turned 'On' by default in most factory phones, only shows the places I have taken the phone, so it was either not operational before last night or all data from before last night has been wiped." He turned the phone over in his hand, he said, opening his eyes and sliding the phone across the desk towards the Inspector. "It's not been tampered with—perfect factory condition. Though the volume buttons on the side _are_ a little stiff."

Lestrade took a breath. "I suppose you figured all that out by holding the handset to your forehead and whistling the theme song from _Doctor Who_?"

Sherlock ignored the jibe. "I didn't get anything from the video because I can't watch Molly Hooper being beaten and remain objective."

Lestrade nodded his head. "You're right. I shouldn't have said that."

"I also believe we have until tomorrow night to find her before time runs out."

"New Year's Eve?" Lestrade asked. "Why?"

"A comment Moriarty made last night, about going out with a bang," Sherlock shrugged. "I was thinking of the fireworks on the South Bank."

Lestrade checked his watch. "Well, that gives us…thirty six hours or so," he said. "Lots of time. You'll see." He cleared his throat. "In the meantime, while we wait for a network connection, you could—you know—just a quick kip..."

"I don't need to sleep," Sherlock pre-emptively replied.

"What, that nap you finished about an hour ago?" Lestrade scoffed. "You were barely asleep long enough to have _half_ a proper sleep cycle!"

Sherlock sighed. "It's called polyphasic—"

Lestrade groaned, digging his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Right. Forgot." He grinned. "You're definitely an odd one, Sherlock Holmes."

"You wouldn't have it any other way."

Lestrade chuckled, and Sherlock managed a small smile himself. He cast his eyes to the door. "I believe Sergeant Donovan has news…" he said, motioning through to where Sally Donovan stood, arm akimbo, with a manila folder in her hands.

"It's not really news so much as the _absence _of news, so technically…"

"The vehicle trace on the Toyota?" Lestrade asked as he walked over to her.

Donovan shook her head. "Lot of dead ends," she said. "And I do mean 'dead.'" She handed Lestrade the latest. "That Toyota had been reported missing by a woman in Brixton whose husband apparently offed himself Christmas Eve. Says it was gone when she got home from work. The wife never drove. Car was registered to him, name of John Blakemore. It's the same car that was used in a robbery on Boxing Day—an antique market in Burford."

_Burford..._Sherlock thought, as he exchanged a knowing glance with Lestrade. _The same area where the SIM card was purchased..._

Donovan continued. "A surveillance camera caught a few frames of video of the thieves struggling to load a great steamer trunk into the backseat before taking off."

Lestrade shook his head. "Wait, _apparently_ offed himself?"

"His body hasn't been found, but he left a suicide note," she said, procuring a photocopy of the note itself. "Police thought it was pretty open and shut, as it were. Happens all the time. Man drives to a bridge, parks the car at one end, throws himself off it...body eventually turns up months later and miles away—"

"But not in this case," Sherlock announced, and Donovan's reaction let him know he was right—there was more to this than met the eye. He shot up out of the office chair behind the desk. "Do you have the video frames?"

"Thought you'd ask that," Donovan smirked as she handed three blown up frames of grainy surveillance video footage to the detective, who bent over them on Lestrade's desk. Donovan leaned at his side as he looked through them.

Her pulse had quickened, the heat from her blood warming the perfumed spots on either side of her neck and sending a wave of scent his way. He side-eyed her with a half-grin. "Don't pretend this—the chase—isn't at least a little bit thrilling to you."

"Never said it wasn't," she replied with a cool smirk of her own before adding, almost affectionately: "Freak."

Sherlock shuffled through the photos in order. In the first, two men were seen with the trunk; it was unhelpful in identifying the men, but it was possible to match the car, which had no doubt already been done. In the second, the men stood, apparently arguing, near the boot of the car; their faces, partially obscured, could be more clearly seen, and it became apparent that they matched the descriptions of the men Molly had said were following her—both larger men, one bald, one with darker hair and a bit of a beard. The third showed the vehicle driving off down the street, indicating the direction they'd left on their escape route.

He set them on the table and reached into the pocket of his coat, draped over Lestrade's chair, for his magnifying lens. He concentrated on the second photo still. "This man on the right—the rugby player—is a local, well-known in the community. His partner—the bald man, the fat one—is, I believe, John Blakemore."

Lestrade pulled the photo away. "You wouldn't mind telling us how you got all that?"

Sherlock jabbed a finger at the photo. "This man has his collar pulled up and his hat pulled down. Why? To obscure his face. He knows that there are CCTV cameras lining the High Street, and he knows if he's seen on them, he'll be recognized," he announced, pausing before continuing. "Also, his coat bears the crest of the Burford Golf Club. He's a regular member," he said as Lestrade and Donovan looked closely in disbelief.

Other officers arriving in the bullpen, coupled with the talking within the office, had roused John from his fitful slumber while they hadn't been looking. He shambled into the office, eyes full of sleep. "Wha's goin' on?"

"Mornin' handsome," Donovan joked.

Lestrade ignored them both. "And you know the other man is Blakemore because—?"

He sighed. "According to his license, Blakemore is over two meters tall, and yet we know he drives a small 1987 Toyota Camry. _This_ car. Which has been driven into the ground from the looks of it. This car is tied to his livelihood—probably not real estate or sales, as he would have invested in a bigger, more expensive car to impress clients, so I'm thinking low wage, low profile, likely food delivery." Sherlock stopped, briefly, scanning the photos again. "A man who drives a car he can barely fit in, day in and day out for a long enough period of time for his car to look like this—he's going to have back and neck problems. The bald man's neck, you'll notice, is craned forward, indicating muscle atrophy and damage to the cervical spine caused by long hours of holding the neck in an uncomfortable, unnatural position, such as hunched forward to accommodate a his body inside a low-roofed vehicle." He then pulled the report out of Lestrade's grasp and flipped through until he landed on a photocopied image scan of Blakemore's driver's license and passport. "Also, his photo ID and image on the surveillance frames match," he said, regaining even more of his confidence as he spoke. "Really, I do marvel at how you lot get _anything_ done without me."

Donovan took the photo and the scanned image of Blakemore's ID and let out a whistle.

Sherlock went back to the first photo. "The handprint on the door to Molly's flat."

"Yes," Lestrade said. "What about it?"

"It was one of these men," Sherlock said, thrusting a finger against the photo paper. "They're both large, burly, matching the description..."

"And one of 'em lives in Burford where the SIM was purchased," Lestrade grabbed the stack of photos and slapped them against his open palm. "I'll get these photos enhanced, send someone around to Molly's landlord for an ID. These two, they're exactly the type of muscle Moriarty might hire to intimidate…"

Sherlock unwilling let his mind wander over the image in his mind's eye of Molly, barely five-foot-three, weighing nothing, being roughed up by bullies twice her size. His stomach knotted.

"I'm certain if we can track down John Blakemore or the Burford Man…"

Before he knew what was happening, Donovan and Lestrade were going full-bore, and two more detectives from the cubicles outside had been hauled in by a barking Lestrade to help with the sudden influx of things to do. Internal calls to everyone who could be of help had been initiated for more information—any information—about Blakemore, his acquaintances in Brixton and the Cotswolds, any known associates of Moriarty in either area who could be brought in for questioning—all of which meant employing other police divisions, which meant the network of people working this case was steadily growing across the south of England and the West Country. Sherlock once more felt at the centre of a maelstrom but also, somehow, on the periphery of it. He leaned his thigh against the desktop and checked out. The world thrummed on just fine without him. Or in spite of him. It didn't surprise him either way. Suddenly impotent and small, he wanted to disappear.

"Sherlock?"

The detective looked up to find John standing beside him, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, still wearing the cloak of slumber on his face. Sherlock took a breather. Orders barked into mobile phones stalked curses hollered at the floor and the walls and the ceiling tiles as Lestrade and Donovan filled the office with their authority. John's presence was reassuring, calm, as it ever had been. Not for the first time since Lazarus, he wanted it to be just the two of them, opposite each other in their chairs, conferring and thrashing the case about looking for answers.

"You want to go grab some breakfast?"

Sherlock considered. "Where is there to eat near here?"

John laughed. "Everywhere. It's London."

"But I don't _like _everywhere."

John sighed. "Look, there's probably a coffee shop. Starbucks or something." He nudged Sherlock's shoulder. "Come on."

Sherlock considered, feeling his stomach rumble and realizing he hadn't eaten anything since midday the day before. "I suppose beggars can't be choosers."

"So that's a yes?"

Sherlock turned to Lestrade, who had just hung up with his man in cyber division. "We should have a connection up within the hour," Lestrade said. "You're going to breakfast?"

Sherlock grabbed his coat and scarf. "Won't be long. _Do not _launch the app without me."

"Okay," Lestrade replied. "Why? What are you planning, Sherlock?"

"Just wait for me," was all the detective said as he and John strode from the room.

"I take mine no sugar!" Lestrade called after them. "Thanks for asking..."


	12. Video

**A/N: I have no clue if any of this is technically possible, or how long it would take to set up...I tried researching it but never hit on exactly what I wanted to have happen. So if you're reading this and you see a glaring error, please let me know via PM so that I can rework it! I really strive for accuracy as much as possible! Thanks for your help!**

* * *

New Scotland Yard  
One hour later

In the middle of the Cyber Crime division's massive computer room, facing a bank of monitors and a large video screen, Sherlock, John, Lestrade, Sergeant Donovan, and two of the division's best computing scientists stood awaiting the result of their work. The secured linkup between the Met's computers and those of the app developer in Seattle was live; the data from the phone was going to be sent directly to the computer and displayed on the video monitor for them all to see, pore over, and analyze. The iPhone, plugged into the computer via a USB cable, was ready to go. A digital recording system had been set up to record the video—whatever it was—that would end up showing over the app's connection.

All someone had to do was launch the app.

Sherlock was uneasy with the whole venture. The more he thought about it, the less comfortable he was was with scanning and decrypting GPS signals across an entire ocean. He didn't like that a room full of people were going to be seeing Molly in such a vulnerable and less-than-dignified state. He wasn't even entirely sure that the safety and security of the linkup would be hidden from Moriarty in the first place.

But, what choice was there? He was missing vital clues about the room Molly was in; if he had the chance to look, just for a second, to see where the shadows and light cast from the mid-morning sun hit the floor, he would be able to figure out the orientation of the room and possibly the entire building. It was important information to have; when coupled with the rest of the information he'd gleaned, he could develop a profile of her location and narrow it all down considerably. If he was going to open the app anyway, they might as well try.

_What harm can there be?_

Sherlock felt his personal phone, tucked into his pocket, buzz for the fourth time since he and John had left to get coffee. Texts from Moriarty filled his inbox, all sent within the last 45 minutes. He'd not bothered replying to any of them.

**When are you coming back, Sherly?**

**Rise and shine, Great Detective! Molly's here...**

**Sherrrrrrrloooooooooooock...**

The final text, sent seconds earlier, still hovered on the lock screen as he lifted it from his pocket:

**I'm waiting.**

Sherlock shut his eyes, took a breath, and moved to the burner phone on the desk. He picked it up, his thumb hovered over the Home button. "How long will it take?"

"As long as it needs to," Lestrade said.

"That's not comforting," John replied.

"Five minutes, tops," the first tech said. "If we don't have it by then, we aren't going to get it."

Sherlock took a deep breath. "Any time?"

"Any time."

Sherlock thumbed his way to the app and clicked it open, and the basic loading screen appeared as the app launched. After that, the start page loaded, and he clicked the large green 'Connect' button that initiated the linkup. A quiet flurry of movement buzzed around him as the two techs in the room and the one in Seattle—being Skyped in herself on one of the computers on the desk in front of the techs—began their dance.

Sherlock waited, his eyes glued to the screen as the fuzzy image began broadcasting. There was no sign of Molly, though Sherlock could see the crude hook attached to the ceiling where she'd been strung up the day before. Only Moriarty's pixelated face appeared in front of the camera, and he blocked most of the room behind him. He was holding a phone to his ear, motioning with his finger towards it before pointing at the camera lens.

In an instant, within Sherlock's pocket, his personal phone began to ring.

"Answer it," Lestrade said.

Sherlock frowned and reached into his pocket, where—indeed—Moriarty was calling him. He swiped to answer the call and put it on speakerphone.

"Welcome back, Mr. Holmes," Moriarty said with a pout as the camera fizzled, went black, and then came to life again. "I was beginning to think you were ignoring me."

"Are you getting anything?" John hissed as he leaned over the shoulder of one of the technicians, a safe distance away to avoid being overheard.

"Oh, hello Dr. Watson," Moriarty said with an exaggerated wave of his hand as he spoke over his shoulder. "We've got a bigger audience than expected, my girl…"

"Let me see her," Sherlock demanded.

Moriarty considered and then shrugged, "Let me think about it..."

As the words left his mouth, the camera jerked and fizzled once again, and Sherlock thought he saw the image of a second man walk into the room at the extreme right of the screen.

"Who is that?" Lestrade asked the techs at the computers. "Can you clean this up? We can't see his face!"

The man was standing just out of the range of the camera, barely visible. One or two frames might contain more information. Sherlock could see from the man's shoes and tailored trousers that he was _not _one of the muscle men hired to carry out Molly's kidnapping. But who could it be? Another assistant?

Moriarty had covered the phone's mouthpiece to talk to the man, but from the screen, everyone could see that his face was growing red and angry. When he pulled his hand away from the phone, he hollered into it. "Are you and your lackeys at Scotland Yard enjoying the show?"

_He knows._

Sherlock's heart sank. He cast his eyes at Lestrade, who looked back at him with apology and panic all over his face.

"I know you're tracing this signal," Moriarty said as he reached up and ripped the camera from the wall. The image sputtered but didn't fade entirely. Moriarty carried it over to Molly's bedside, where Sherlock saw her for the first time since the night before. She was lying prone on the centre of the bed, not quite asleep but drowsy, leaving no doubt in Sherlock's mind that she had been drugged. The abuses to her body caused John to mutter profanities under his breath; on the other side of the room, Sgt. Donovan gasped. It was a horrific sight: the intervening day had caused the bruises covering her body to bleed and spread out across her pale skin, and it was hard to find a patch that hadn't been discoloured. Some bruises bore the vague shape of the instrument that had caused it; others were diffuse bluish-purple splotches with no pattern or hard dimension to them at all.

Sherlock balled his fist up at his side. "You sick, twisted—"

"_You're the one who broke the rules, Sherlock!" _Moriarty yelled as he turned the camera around to himself. He had removed his jacket and tossed it to the bed, as if preparing for a fight. Sherlock steeled himself. "So now you're going to have to suffer the consequences. Or, rather, Molly will."

And with that, he disconnected the camera. The screen went blank. But Molly's cries over the speakerphone as those consequences commenced echoed in the cavernous silence that surrounded them.

Sherlock gripped the phone in his hand, squeezing it until he was certain he may actually break it. It was John who stepped in and removed it from his hand, severing the connection.

Lestrade fumed. "We should have been tracing the call!"

"He's too smart for that," Sherlock muttered before growing quiet, pensive, in the ensuing chaos as the technicians and detectives rallied to do what they could with the information they'd received. It had been less than two minutes in total; there couldn't have gotten much.

Sherlock closed his eyes as a text message vibrated his phone in John's hand. The two men paused to read it:

**_Was it good for you?_**

He closed his eyes and forced a deep breath. "You're going to have to look the other way when it comes to pressing murder charges against me once you find Moriarty's body," he said to Lestrade as he yanked the phone away from John and tossed it into his pocket.

"That's if I don't get to him first," Lestrade said.

Sherlock walked the length of the room, shuddering with ballistic fury. He leaned over the computer station where the digital recording was made and played back the video at double speed. When it was over, he played it again. And he was about to play it a third time when John stepped up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Sherlock—"

The detective sagged beneath John's touch as he stopped the video. "I don't know how to help her," he said softly.

"You are helping. You're doing everything you can."

Sherlock sighed, the angry guttural groan ripping from his sternum and sounding painful in the sundering. He ran his hands back through his hair before standing up and drawing his coat close about him. "Clean up the video," he ordered. "Send me the best frames. I want to know who the other man in the room was."

The police officers turned their eyes from Sherlock to Lestrade, looking for direction. Lestrade didn't need to be told twice to give it. "You heard the man," he said with a nod. "And while you're at it, let Seattle know that we want whatever they've got. The answer we need could be in there."

Sherlock tightened his scarf around his neck. "And I'm going to find it," he said.

* * *

30 December 2014  
Somewhere in London  
Same time

Molly groaned and rolled to her back, away from the threatening figure hovering over her. It was not Moriarty this time; he stood at the end of the bed, hands shoved into the pockets of his suit, keeping an eye on her. Sebastian Moran was the one whose hands had been employed in the latest assault. He heaved at her side, red-faced and full of venom as he shook with anger and excitement.

"That wasn't even half my strength, girl," he menaced, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "You'd better hope I don't have cause to do worse."

Everything hurt; she tasted blood in her mouth. Still she found resolve. "Do whatever you'd like," she croaked. "Because when they find you—"

Moran scoffed and yanked Molly's feet down, attaching them tightly to the rusted and bent bed post at the foot of the bed. "Keep dreaming, Miss Hooper. No one's coming for you." He moved up to her hands, attaching them by the leather cuffs to the head of the bed. "Don't you understand? Sherlock Holmes has been given everything he needs to find you. The world's greatest consulting detective has taken more than two days to figure out _nothing_. How does that make you feel?"

Molly allowed herself a split second of doubt before shaking her head. "You're wrong."

Moran patted the side of her face before reaching into his pocket and producing the same roll of electrician's tape Moriarty had used to bind her mouth earlier. He tore a strip from the roll and pressed it over her lips. "Am I?"

The man cackled and stood up, jittery with adrenaline as he walked on shaking legs to the door.

Moriarty rounded the end of the bed. "I knew you wouldn't like him when he's angry," he grinned. He ran a finger up the ball of her foot, and Molly jerked it away. "Take care, dear Molly."

He stalked out of the room, closing and locking the door behind him.

Molly shut her eyes and finally let out the painful groan she'd been holding in the entire time the two men had been tormenting her. She wanted to cry but promised herself she wouldn't. She wanted to scream but made herself swear she wouldn't do that, either. She almost felt herself tipping over the edge towards anger at Sherlock for not getting there faster, but pulled herself back at the last moment as she struggled against the bonds holding her feet and arms together instead.

As she did, two things happened. The first was that Molly discovered that her right hand slipped easily through the leather cuff; Moran had been too crazed and distracted to properly secure it. This, in itself, was something of a minor miracle. But the second thing that happened was, as Molly then attempted to pull her ankles from the cuffs at her feet, she felt Moriarty's jacket at the end of the bed. And laying beside the jacket, its cold weight pressed against the inside of her foot as she strained to pull it free from the leather ankle cuff, was his phone.

Molly gasped and held perfectly still for a long moment before unclasping her right hand and then her left, sitting up—with great pain and labour—and grabbing the handset. Holding it, she felt woozy. _What in the world are you going to do with this, Molly?_

Noises outside the room reminded her of her limited options. She thought about placing a call to the police; they could trace the call, certainly, triangulating her location and pinpointing it exactly. She could have called Sherlock. But as the men's voices sounded closer to the door—their argument quickly getting heated—Molly panicked a little. She scanned her immediate surroundings and saw a large tear in the mattress beside where her head lay; so she switched the phone off and tucked it between the worn fabric-and-foam padding and the top of the mattress spring for safe-keeping until she needed it.

She laboured to lie down again, the pain of her beatings far too intense to allow any sort of sudden movements, and slid her hands back up and into the cuffs that she'd loosened before closing her eyes to count her lucky stars.

Then, Molly Hooper began formulating a plan.


	13. Secrets

30 December 2014  
Baker Street  
Afternoon

Frigid temperatures pulled sleet from the clouds that froze on the windows and the roadways as soon as it hit. It was colder than it had been in several days, and the promise of snow hung unspoken in the air; John could see his breath as he handed the contents of his wallet to the cab driver after Sherlock tumbled from the cab, his long-limbed stride carrying him to the front door with elegant ease despite the fury that propelled him forward.

The cab pulled away, and Sherlock was still standing on the stoop, his hand on the brass knocker. John walked up behind him. "What? What is it?"

Sherlock twisted his wrist, taking the knocker with it until it sat askew against the glossy black door. "Mycroft's been here."

He pushed his way into the foyer and took the stairs two at a time.

Mrs. Hudson appeared from the door to her flat. "Sherlock, your brother—"

But Sherlock was already on his landing, barging into his sitting room, John not far behind. Sure enough, Mycroft sat in Sherlock's chair, facing the door.

"You have some nerve," Sherlock drawled.

Mycroft seemed unimpressed with Sherlock's show of bravado. He rested his elbows on the armrests, fingers laced together in his lap overtop a black leather padfolio. "Doing away with customary greetings?" he lost his grin. "How efficient."

"What are you doing here?"

Mycroft stood up. "Because I wanted to..._apologize_ for what happened yesterday."

Both Sherlock and John stared in slack-jawed shock as Mycroft cleared his throat to continue.

"I have been less-than-forthcoming as of late, and though I have my reasons for this, certain events have transpired recently to make me realize that you and I work better even as a highly dysfunctional team than we do as enemies," he said. "We are working towards the same goal, generally speaking. We shouldn't be so adversarial."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. He didn't want to work together with him; he wanted to _murder _him. "Why should I believe you?" Sherlock asked.

Mycroft looked down at the leather case in his hands. "Because, Sherlock. You need me, more than you know," he said, looking up at him. "And I need you."

John stepped out from behind Sherlock. "Would you mind filling me in on what this is all about?"

Sherlock, without breaking eye contact with Mycroft, explained: "My brother knew of the threat to Molly's life, knew that Moriarty was alive, and yet he allowed Molly to be abducted in order to facilitate Moriarty's capture."

John shifted his weight from one foot to the other and studied the elder Holmes for a long moment before clearing his own throat. "I'll hold, you punch?" he asked finally.

Mycroft rolled his eyes. "Spare me the histrionics, boys."

John exploded. "Histrionics? Jesus, Mycroft! Molly is _out there_ and you _let it happen_!"

Mycroft unzipped the folio and opened it. After flipping through a few pages, he stopped and read: "Joyce Miller, former Lieutenant and Special Intelligence Officer in Her Majesty's Army. Three years in military black ops. Two tours in Iraq. Recruited by the Special Reconnaissance Regiment in 2011 and then to MI6 fourteen months ago..."

Sherlock's eyes snapped into focus. _Joyce Miller? Molly's downstairs neighbour? A secret service agent?_

"Who?" John asked. "Joyce Miller? Who is Joyce Miller?"

Mycroft ignored him, flipping the pages in front of him as he kept reading. "Captain James Asher. Forty one. Nine year veteran of the Intelligence and Surveillance Brigade. Recruited to MI6 at the end of his last tour in Afghanistan." A pause. "I believe you've traced him to Burford?"

"What are you saying?" Sherlock asked.

"I didn't leave Molly high and dry," Mycroft said, closing the folder. "I may be heartless but I'm not without honour."

"Wait...wait..." John held up his hands. "You're telling me that the man who hustled Molly out of her home—the Burford Man—was one of _your _men?"

"As was her neighbour. Haven't you ever heard of a double agent?" Mycroft asked.

Sherlock suddenly observed how old his brother looked. Haggard, tired, worn around the edges. He looked so much like their father. Sherlock felt tension in his shoulders slip away as the slight edge of protectiveness sliced through his indignant veneer. "What's happened, Mycroft?"

Mycroft looked to Sherlock. "While you were taking down Moriarty's network on the Continent, we heard rumblings of growth on the home front. We pulled you from Serbia because we needed to focus our attentions. I didn't tell you because I didn't want the work to be jeopardized. Joyce Miller was installed downstairs from Molly to protect her last year, just before your triumphant return from the dead. Asher has been integrated into Moriarty's network for almost as long." He took a breath and sighed. "We needed to find out who Moriarty's second-in-command was, who turned to when it came to faking his death and who was running the show and growing his British network in his absence. We couldn't do that with you drawing resources elsewhere. And we couldn't do it without an inside man and more than a few secrets."

"But?" Sherlock interjected.

Mycroft took a breath. "But...Asher has gone AWOL, which could mean it is simply too dangerous for him to contact us or it could mean he's been discovered," Mycroft said. "If he's been discovered...Sherlock, as long as he was there, I could be relatively sure that Molly was not going to be harmed. But with the spectre of his absence lingering over this whole operation, that guarantee is—"

"She's been hurt, Mycroft!" John hollered. "We've seen the pictures! We heard it happening!"

Mycroft's eyes reflected his sorrow. "You must believe me. I was only doing what I thought was best."

Sherlock closed his eyes and shook his head. He was, surprisingly, understanding. And while he was still angry at being kept in the dark by his older brother on this matter, there was sense in Mycroft's admission that they needed each other. When he opened his eyes, he made his way to his computer. "We may have uncovered footage of the second man."

"May I see it?" Mycroft asked.

Sherlock had already opened his email application and was waiting for it to connect and download the emails he was certain would be there from Lestrade. Sure enough, two new email messages from Scotland Yard popped up: one containing the full video they had recorded that morning, and the other containing several enhanced film stills and a map, showing the approximated area where the camera signal may have originated. He ignored the map and flicked through the still images—five in total. Mycroft stood at one side and John stood on the other.

"There!" John said, as he pointed to the screen. Sherlock stilled his hands. The image showed a closeup but blurred shot of Moriarty's face, but was clear enough as it captured the image of the second man standing in the doorway to the room. He wore a long coat and gloves on his hands and looked to be of slightly taller than average height and build. His face was uncovered.

Sherlock turned to Mycroft. "Does this help?" he asked.

But it was John who spoke up next. "Oh my god..."

Both Holmes men turned to look at the doctor, whose face had blanched.

"John?" Sherlock asked. "Are you okay?"

"I know that man," he said. "Oh my god, I know that man..."

"Who is he?" Sherlock asked.

John swallowed. "Colonel Sebastian Moran. Formerly of the 1st Bangalore Pioneers—"

"Currently of Conduit Street," Mycroft finished, his shoulders heavy. "Dishonourable discharge, was it not, Doctor Watson?"

Sherlock turned to look at his friend. "How do you know him?"

John sighed and sank into his chair. "It was my first tour of duty. I had only been in Afghanistan for a week when his unit came in. Massive roadside IED completely destroyed one of their transport vehicles as they were leaving Kabul. Half the detachment was killed," John swallowed hard. "Colonel Moran had a reputation for being a bit trigger-happy. Excellent marksman. He hated that being promoted meant he was pushed farther and farther back from the front lines, and he often went out with the men on deployments, sometimes in secret. No one really liked it but he was a bit unstoppable and rather indispensable once you put a rifle in his hands."

John shifted in his chair. "I think they'd been under heavy fire for nine days or so when they eventually had to pull back, and that's when the IED hit them. So nine days of combat only to retreat and get half your men blown to bits...Colonel Moran was in a state by the time I got to him. No physical injuries, but a lot of psychological trauma. I don't think the man should have been redeployed in the first place. So I made a recommendation that he be discharged and referred for psychological evaluation at our base in Germany."

"But he didn't take too well to that news?" Sherlock guessed.

John shook his head and was quiet for a long time. "The night before he was to be shipped out, he asked to see me. I went. I don't know what I expected. But he'd fashioned a kind of shiv from a piece of splintered wood and a flattened and carefully folded Coca-Cola can. He attacked me a few minutes after I arrived in his hospital room. Told me if he wasn't going to be allowed to remain in the army then I shouldn't be allowed to remain on this Earth." John nodded and smiled, grimly. "I managed to hold him off, but I really believed I was going to die. Luckily a couple of nurses alerted the MPs and they got him off me. He was discharged. Dishonourably. Last I heard he was still in Germany..."

"He was given a clean bill of health and released from the hospital after six months," Mycroft said. "Spent a few years in America. Acquired some wealth playing poker, I believe. Card-counter. Swindled a few casinos, if I'm to understand it correctly. But when he returned to England, he quickly gravitated towards Moriarty, and rose through the ranks to become his number two man." Mycroft's eyes traveled from John's face to Sherlock's as he replied: "After Moriarty, he's the most dangerous man in England."

Sherlock looked back at John, who sat pensively in the chair, fear and worry etching deep lines in his forehead.

"How's Mary?" Mycroft asked John.

The directness of the question startled John, who sat up straight and coughed before replying. "Mary? She's—erm—she's fine. Doing just fine."

Once again, the sadness in Mycroft's eyes as he spoke was loud enough for Sherlock to pick up on. Mycroft tried to hide it with a smile as he turned and began making his way towards the door. "Thank you. This has been a tremendous help. However I must take my leave of you. There is much work to be done and not much time in which to do it," he said. "I'll be in touch if any more information comes to light."

John muttered his goodbye; Sherlock followed Mycroft down the stairs.

On the street outside, as Mycroft adjusted his gloves on his hands, Sherlock finally spoke up. "What was that up there? Why are you asking about Mary?"

Mycroft's car pulled up alongside the curb and he made a move towards it. "No reason."

"We've been down this road before, Mycroft."

"No, brother, we haven't," Mycroft replied, "And if there was ever a time when I would beg you to trust me, it's now."

"Why?"

Mycroft's face was grim, stony. "It's far too soon to tell," he said finally. "Far too soon."

With that, he stepped into his car and slammed the door shut. It echoed off the cold stone walls of the buildings on either side for a long while, only replaced by the sound of the engine as his sedan peeled away and sped off down Baker Street.

* * *

Sherlock returned to the upstairs parlour to find John hunched over his phone. As he noticed Sherlock's presence, he straightened and pocketed the handset. "We should get to work."

"Really?" Sherlock asked.

"Yeah. Bring up those photo stills, the map Lestrade sent you," he sniffled. "Put that great detective's mind to work."

"Who were you texting?"

"Hm?" John asked. "Oh. Nothing. It's just—"

"Mary?"

John huffed, crossing his arms in front of him and hooking his thumbs in the crook of his elbows. "Mycroft said...and I just thought..." he shook his head. "I'm sure it's nothing. Just a bit of paranoia, that's all. No sleep, remember?"

Sherlock nodded, cautiously, as he stepped over to his computer and brought up the emails from Lestrade. "You should go home, John."

John ignored him, forcing a laugh as he leaned over Sherlock's shoulder. Unsure of which social cue to follow—should he pursue his initial interrogation or let John's forced laissez-faire stance win the day?—Sherlock opted to focus on the task at hand.

"So what have we got already?" John asked. "Clues-wise, I mean. Plaster walls, so pre-Second World War and..."

"Sunlight," Sherlock said, pointing to the screen and the enhanced still. "Cutting diagonally, top right to middle left of the screen. Judging by the shadows and where we know the sun was this morning when this was taken, this window faces north-northeast. Which also means the street runs at a diagonal—" he made a slashing motion across the screen, approximating where the street was outside the window. "From the northwest to the southeast."

"Right," John said, taken aback. "Wow, okay. So that helps us how?"

Sherlock pulled up the map Lestrade had sent. A large transparent red circle had been drawn over Central London encompassing Islington in the north to the Southwark in in south, east to Shoreditch and west to Paddington.

"That's where they figure the signal is coming from?" John asked. "God, there must be a million people residing in there."

"At least," Sherlock said. "But not all of these streets run on the diagonal."

Sherlock was about to start plugging in the data into his various archives for cross-referencing when John jabbed his finger into the screen. "What's that?"

Sherlock glanced up and saw what John was referring to—a pixelated smudge across the top of the screen in one of the enhanced photos. Curious, he zoomed in. "A fire sprinkler?" he asked.

"Looks like."

"What kind of a room has a fire sprinkler in it?"

John _hmm'd_ before replying. "Hotels? Some of the more scrupulous landlords will install them in the rentals they own too."

"You brilliant man," Sherlock said, smiling at John. "All we have to do is find hotels or apartment blocks on streets running along this diagonal within this circle and—"

He was interrupted by the buzz of a text message. Without thinking, he reached into his pocket, producing his handset.

_Unknown number? _

**Flogging Molly is a wonderful band...and an entertaining way to spend one's afternoon.**

The was followed by a blurred photo of Molly's face, and abraded cross-hatched covering her cheekbone.

John peered over Sherlock's shoulder as the texts came in, but his anger reached a boiling point before Sherlock's did; he walked away from the desk as Sherlock furiously typed back. But before he could send it, a second text buzzed in his hand.

**Did the Geek Squad find anything incriminating?**

A long pause. Sherlock's hands remained still.

**You broke the rules, you know. I don't like playing games with rule breakers.**

Sherlock fired back:

**Then stop playing, Sebastian.**

For a long moment, there was nothing. Sherlock waited, pressing his fingertips into the sides of his phone impatiently.

Finally:

**Would you ask Doctor Watson how his wife is?**

Sherlock nearly lost his nerve. That was the third time Mary had been brought up as an object of inquiry in this investigation: first by John himself, then by Mycroft, and now by Sebastian Moran. _I could have explained away the first one...the second one left me leery. But a third time? _Sherlock scrubbed a hand over his face.

_Three times is more than a coincidence._

"What is it Sherlock?" John asked.

Sherlock looked up to John. With a heavy sigh, he replied. "You need to go now. Go to Mary."

"Why?"

"Just do as I say."

"Sherlock—"

Sherlock didn't reply, and anger flashed in John's eyes.

"What in the hell is going on here, Sherlock? Why is everyone so bloody concerned about my wife?" he let his arms drop to his side, exasperated. "What did Mycroft say outside? Hm? What did Moriarty say just now?"

Sherlock glanced down at the phone in his hand. "This isn't Moriarty."

John shook his head. "This is bollocks. All of it." He grabbed his coat.

"John—"

"Enough with the mind games, Sherlock. I really don't want to play at this game right now," John replied, throwing his coat on. "If you want me, you know how to reach me."

With that, John stormed out of the flat. Sherlock watched him go, knowing without knowing why that he could not follow him or offer any more assistance than he already had. From the window, he saw John hail a taxi and make his way down the street; another text buzzed in his hand once the car disappeared from view.

**I'm going to kill Molly Hooper by midnight tonight. Tick tock, Sherlock.**

Sherlock shut his eyes and took three deep, steady breaths.

_It starts now..._


	14. Whispers

30 December 2014  
Baker Street  
Sunset  


Sherlock wasn't aware that the sun had set until he rubbed his bleary eyes and looked up from the computer to find the flat plunged into twilit darkness. He sat up in his chair rolled his shoulders, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, his sore muscles crying out for relief. His stomach complained as well—he hadn't eaten since he and John had visited the cafe in Victoria Street earlier that day. He'd eaten half a muffin and small coffee.

He checked his watch. 4:28 pm.

_Less than eight hours..._Sherlock thought, scrubbing his fingertips into his eyes before glancing out the window. It had in fact begun snowing. The flickering strobe of the broken light in the street alternately cast shadows and light across the parlour; it was suddenly the most irksome thing he could imagine, having been broken since before Christmas and still no closer to being repaired. But as he got more and more worked up over the thought of the city's apparent laziness when it came to the maintenance of basic infrastructure, he heard John's voice in his head, clear as day.

_"It's not helping Molly, mate. Focus..."_

He took a steady breath. "Focus. Focus..." he said, wrenching his attention away from the streetlight and to the computer screen.

He'd spent the better part of the afternoon cross-referencing the information he had with dozens of databases he had access to—building records and census data and the permits office—in order to construct a map of Central London that contained the likeliest locations where Molly was being held. That map now sat filled with at least a hundred digital pins on his desktop; the task of narrowing the search even further was next.

He rubbed his eyes again, dying for a cup of tea but far too into the work to stop the flow.

_Streets on a diagonal, northwest to southeast_, he said as he looked at the online map. Right away he could easily discount several of the locations closer to the river in the oldest sections of the City, whose streets seemed to radiate away from the river at perpendicular angles and sweeping arcs that certainly didn't run in the direction he needed them to; in the same manner he was able to rule out whole sections of Southwark, Elephant &amp; Castle, and Vauxhall as well. The roads of Pimlico, Bloomsbury, and most of Paddington angled too steeply; the ones of Knightsbridge and Islington not steeply enough; and most of Butler's Wharf and Shoreditch ran in entirely the wrong direction. Thus, by process of elimination, he worked until only ten potential locations matching all of his search queries remained outside of Mayfair, Soho, and Marylebone.

In this concentrated area, however, sat dozens of matches, all of which had serious potential. Sherlock studied the map, deciding which course of action he would take. In a second window, he'd opened one of the enhanced photos in which a glimmer of the street outside the window could be seen. After adjusting the contrast and brightness levels, he could just make out London's nearly ubiquitous white-stone-and-wrought-iron-railings combination of the homes across the street. Every pin dropped into the map would need to be examined at the street level, matched with what he saw through the window pane in the enhanced video still.

_This could take hours_, he thought as he began zooming in on each location, using the street view functions to further rule out locations based on what sat across the street from them. He glanced at his watch again. 4:43 pm. He rubbed his eyes and redoubled his efforts.

The buzz of his phone was almost ignorable, and for several long seconds, Sherlock did his admirable best to tune it out. But as he happened to glance over and see the number, his heart stopped. His hands flew from the keyboard and he hurried to pick it up.

"Moriarty," he barked into the handset. "I need more time. I'll play the game but I _need more time_."

The silence on the other end was deafening. Sherlock fisted his hand at his side.

"Don't hide from me," he threatened. "I _will_ find you. Mark my words..."

Faintly, in the background, he heard the rise and fall of angry voices, distant and muffled and completely undecipherable.

"Moriarty!" Sherlock cried through clenched teeth. "What is this? You coward. Are you too afraid to talk to me?"

Then he heard it. His own name in hushed repetition. Soft and barely there, like the floral perfume she dotted along her collarbone every morning—and he knew because he used to love watching her do it...

Molly.

_It's Molly._

And she was calling his name.

* * *

3 November 2013  
The Royal Hospital of St. Bartholomew  
Very Late Night

_The little gasp that left her throat as she saw him in the mirror and spun to face him gave him pause—what did it mean? Was she happy? Scared?__—but he had so little time to examine the thought before she'd crossed the tiled floor of the change room and pitched her arms around his neck. Thrown almost off-balance, he dug in his heels, catching her tiny frame against his as she seemed desperate to climb further than was humanly possible into his arms, into his very shadow. He'd been expecting her to be happy, but he hadn't expected this_. _He circled his hands about her waist and held her, lifting her until the tips of her toes were all that touched the ground._

_"Sherlock..." Molly whispered against his neck, burying her face against his scarf and breathing him in._

_"Hello Molly," he said against her hair, gathered behind her ear in a messy side ponytail that was all-but-obliterated by the crushing pressure of her embrace. "I'm back."_

_"For good?"_

_"For good."_

_She pulled away, her hands lifting to hold his face. "Let me look at you," she said, studying him with eyes gaping. "Christ, what did you do to your face?"  
_

_Sherlock touched his tender nose, then flicking his split lip with his tongue. "John wasn't exactly pleased with my subterfuge..."_

_Her eyes filled with tears and yet she smiled. Sherlock furrowed his brow._

_"Molly, I'm sure it looks much worse than it actually is__—"_

_"It's not that," Molly sniffled. "__I just didn't know when..." she stroked her thumbs over his cheeks. He leaned into her touch, closing his eyes as the oft-remembered sensation was drawn from his memory and made real once more._

_"I've missed you," he said._

_"Me too," she choked._

_His hands still sat on her hips, but he wanted more__—to press his fingers into her flesh, to rediscover the places that made her sigh and which ones made her shudder, to kiss the lithe line of her neck and pull his name once more from the base of her throat__. Looking into her eyes as the tears began to drop over her lashes, Sherlock realized his pretension of civility and mere friendship was not going to hold, that he was foolish to believe it would. A sound he wasn't entirely sure came from his sternum growled up and past his lips as he leaned into her, slanting his lips across hers and tightening his grip on her frame, walking them both towards the bank of lockers she'd just been standing by. _

_With Molly's fingers tangled in his hair, pulling his head to hers, she deepened the kiss, careful to avoid mangling his already pained face. Slaves to hunger, they each in their own turn took hold of the runaway desire, steering it to where they needed it to go. Molly arched her back against the lockers, craning her neck; his lips broke from hers and found the delicate slope of her jaw, the softness below her earlobe, the warmth of the skin above her pulse point. Her hands were cold, threaded through his hair and gripping the back of his neck, holding him to her. His were warm, long fingers splayed against the small of her back, beneath her lab coat, lifting the hem of her blouse and dancing along her spine. _

_"That's a hideous shirt," he rasped as one hand found the rise of her breast._

_Molly's breathless reply followed the saunter of her hands down his body to his belt: "I hate your trousers."_

_He lifted his head, frowning. "What's wrong with my trousers?"_

_Molly giggled and pulled him back down, but as she did, Sherlock caught sight of the glittery gleam of something on the top shelf of Molly's open locker. _

_A ring._

_He stiffened immediately. Molly, hands still seeking the removal of his trousers, sensed the change. "Sherlock?"_

_He closed his eyes. _What did you expect? _he asked himself._ You told her not to wait. _With a deep and shaky breath, he rested his forehead against hers. "Molly__—__I'm sorry, I just...this__—"_

_"What is it?"_

_He kissed the tip of her nose and released her, painfully, from his grasp. "I've only just come back," he said, stroking the hem of her shirt between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. "It wouldn't be right."_

_"What if I don't want right?" she asked. _

_He shook his head. The words he wanted to say__—his anger and petulance over how quickly she had moved on, the incredible depth of his desire for her, the startling truth that remembrances of their one night together had been his saving grace in the darkest hours that had lain before him when__—were mitigated by the fact that he had no claim to her. None. Not after telling her to move on..._

_He straightened and adjusted his scarf, still circling but slight askew around his neck. _

_"Are you cross?" she asked. "What did I do?"_

_Sherlock tilted his head, regarding her with what he hoped was a healthy dose of tenderness. "Nothing, Molly," he lied. "This has nothing to do with you."_

_She pressed the back of one cold hand to her heated cheeks. "Sherlock__—?"_

_"I just had to see you."_

_"Don't go. There's so much to tell you. So much to ask."_

_"And we have all the time in the world now," he smiled, sadly. "I'm not going anywhere."_

_"Promise?" she begged. "Promise me?"_

_He nodded, swallowing past the lump in his throat. "I promise, Molly."_

_She exhaled, her shoulders visibly deflating as she did, lowering and relaxing within her lab coat. "Okay, Sherlock."_

_He loved the way his name sounded when carried by her voice. Watching the way her lips formed the "Sh", the slight parting of her teeth and the bounce of her tongue on the "L", the way her larynx bobbed on the percussive "K"__—he thought he could live and die by the sight alone. His name, spoken by his Molly. But it was the sound__—a half-whisper but full of complex emotions Sherlock did not possess the range to decipher__—that filled him with wonder and calm and the undeniable sense that all the days left in his life would not be long enough to deserve her._

_But he would strive to. Whatever lay before them now, he knew without a doubt that he would be tireless in his effort to finally earn what she had so freely given him for so many long and tired years._

* * *

30 December 2014  
Baker Street  
Sunset

"Molly!" Sherlock cried. "Molly, where are you?"

His whispered name was barely heard over the connection. He flicked his thumb to send the call to speakerphone while he furiously typed out a text to Lestrade:

**Molly. Phone call. On the line. Baker Street. Now. -SH**

"Molly, can you hear me?"

He strained to listen, holding the phone against the cup of his ear. The furious fighting sounds he'd heard before had amplified; individual words could be made out: "phone" and "trust" and "kill."

Lestrade's return text buzzed in his hand:

**Stay there!**

Sherlock drew a sharp intake of breath. "Molly! Are you still there?"

"Sherlock..." she replied, her voice shaking. "Help."

"Can they hear me?" he asked, lowering his voice, feeling panic welling up in his throat. "Molly, tell me where you are."

"Neighbour..." she said, a little more loudly.

"Neighbour? Which neighbour? Whose neighbour?"

The sound of a door slamming open and the angry voices getting louder nearly drowned out the startled shriek that came from Molly's throat.

"Do it!" the voice belonging to Moran ordered. "I'm not having this hanging over my head for another second!"

"Now?"

"Open the windows! Let her freeze! I don't care. I want this _over!_"

Molly whimpered and Sherlock held his tongue, listening close for anything he could use. Molly's voice had all but disappeared. A door slammed shut; there was silence, save Molly's ragged and frightened breaths.

"Sherlock can't play fair so you don't get to play at all, Miss Molly," Moriarty menaced. "I so hoped I wouldn't have to watch you die tonight."

Another text from Lestrade bounced in from the ether:

**Two cruisers in area. Two minutes.**

Sherlock shut his eyes and hoped against hope that they would get there in time; he could hear the reassuring wail of sirens. Then he heard a loud crack, metal on metal, and his eyes snapped open as Molly began to cry out once again. Soon, she was drowned out by the sound of gushing water.

"It won't take long," Moriarty said. "Not on a night like this. Freezing outside, you know..."

The sirens grew closer. That's when Sherlock realized he could hear the same sirens over the phone connection, on a slight delay. He pressed the mobile closer to his ear. _Could she be that close?_

"Think, Sherlock!" he ordered himself. Bending down over his computer, the phone still clutched in his hand, he factored in the wind speed, ambient air temperature, the placement of the buildings lining Baker Street, and the effect of the Doppler shift on the pitch. As he was triangulating the potential locations where she might be, he heard her cry out at last.

"Light! Sherlock, the flashing light! Please!"

Moriarty's voice came over next. "What did you say?"

Sherlock frowned. _Flashing light. Neighbour. Flashing light? _

"Who are you talking to?" Moriarty demanded.

_Oh my god_.

Sherlock cast his eyes up and out the window into Baker Street. As police lights began to cascade down the street, Sherlock saw the same penetrative strobe of the streetlamp flickering before his eyes.

_Neighbour._

_Our neighbour._

_The Singh family house._

He wanted to yell it from the rooftops, or to at least tell Molly that he knew where she was. But as he lifted the phone to his lips to let her know her he was coming, Moriarty's voice boomed over the connection.

"You conniving little—"

The line sputtered and went dead. Sherlock dropped his phone onto the table, not wanting to waste a single second more. He dashed from the room, his coat almost an afterthought, and took the stairs to the foyer quicker than was probably safe. When he reached the bottom stair, the front door burst open; Lestrade and two uniformed officers stood, guns drawn.

"Do you still have her on the line?"

Hearing the commotion, Mrs. Hudson appeared at her door. "Sherlock, what in heaven's name—?"

"Call the paramedics," he ordered. "And stay in the house!"

"Why?"

Sherlock glanced back at Lestrade. "I know where Molly is."


	15. Rescue

30 December 2014  
Baker Street  
5:00 pm

"Do it!" Moran ordered, his arm stretched out towards the window nearest to the door. "I'm not having this hanging over my head for another second!"

"Now?" Moriarty asked

"Open the windows! Let her freeze! I don't care. I want this over!"

Molly watched as he yanked on the handle and the wooden frame creaked upwards along the groove. From the dark night beyond the glass, flakes of snow flitted in and fell to the floor at Moriarty's feet. He moved to the second window, farther away from the door, and as Moran left Moriarty opened the second pane of glass, which slid up easier than the first.

"Sherlock can't play fair so you don't get to play at all, Miss Molly," Moriarty menaced. "I so hoped I wouldn't have to watch you die tonight."

Molly winced as Moriarty stepped around the end of the bed and pulled up on the window next to her. A rush of frigid air blew in, covering her body. She bit back a startled gasp.

The phone—Moriarty's mobile, the one tucked into the tear in the mattress inches from her head—was still hidden, but Sherlock's harried cries had made the discovery of her subterfuge an almost certainty. She wasn't sure how much longer she'd be able to keep it up before she had to take more drastic measures.

_Your body hurts. You're exhausted. You're starving, _Molly thought to herself, counting off all the reasons why any attempt at escape was likely futile.

_On the other hand, you'll freeze to death if you don't do anything._

She closed her eyes and took a breath.

_That simply won't do._

The sudden sound of metal on metal forced her eyes open. Moriarty was swinging a heavy-gauge wrench with both hands against the fire sprinkler nozzle directly above the bed. Short sprays of freezing cold water had begun to spurt from the nearly ruptured line, and she cried out at the shock of it. After five consistent and hard hits the nozzle finally broke, taking some of the old and corroded pipe with it. Molly couldn't stifle the shriek that left her throat, muffled still against the strip of tape that was only partially covering her mouth, and Moriarty turned to look at her.

"It won't take long," he said. "Not on a night like this. Freezing outside, you know..."

Over the sound of approaching police cars, Molly heard Sherlock over the phone, in his flat next door. She had to give him more.

_It's now or never..._

"Light! Sherlock, the flashing light! Please!" she cried out of the corner of her mouth, through chattering teeth.

Moriarty snapped to her. "What did you say?"

Molly shivered uncontrollably as she shrank away from him in an outward show of fear; yet her eyes flashed with defiance.

"Who are you talking to?"

He approached the bed, and it didn't take him long to discover the phone, blinking and sputtering as it became more and more soaked and damaged by the water coming from above. He pulled it from the ripped mattress, saw it was on and that a call was connected, and his eyes became dark as coal. Livid, he lunged for her.

"You conniving little—"

Molly seized the moment. As Moriarty bent to her, she used the considerable element of surprise, the instincts fostered in her self-defence training, and the fact that she had long since undone the bonds at her wrists and ankles to roll over and deliver a decisive kick with the heel of her foot against Moriarty's shoulder. It sent him stumbling backwards.

Molly laboured to stand up but lost none of her momentum, striding to him and grabbing his hand, twisting it roughly until he cried out. She used his momentum to push the twist even further until she felt a bone snap, and then a second. He crumpled to the floor, in considerable pain, and she rounded off three brutal, swift hits with the flat part of the top of her foot to his face and neck, each blow more powerful than the last. He fell backwards to the floor, groaning twice and stopped moving; blood on his face convinced her she had broken his nose. His wrist sat at an unnatural angle where he lay.

Molly bolted. Running on pure adrenaline and ignoring the cold burn in her skin or the agony of the ache that lived just beneath, she took stock of the room just beyond the one she'd been kept in. It was larger than a hallway but smaller than a foyer or ante-room. The floor was covered in leaves and filth and in the single lightbulb dimness she could see black mold on the wall near what looked to be an old hot water heater. There were five doors leading off from the space: the one she'd come out of, one to her right, two directly across from her, and one finally door up a short set of stairs to her left.

_The front of the building was this way_, she thought as she looked to the door off the stairs. She could hardly feel her toes or her fingers; her bones were shaking. But as she decided to make her way up the stairs and—hopefully—out the front door and onto Baker Street, she spotted the lifeless bodies of the two henchmen stacked in the corner beside the steamer trunk she'd been carted off in days earlier. She had to walk past them to get to the door.

In her line of work Molly had seen countless bodies, in various states of dismemberment, following deaths more ghastly than were even tolerable for pathologists with years of experience in the morgue. Molly had never shied away from a body. Bodies didn't frighten her. These ones, however, with their cold and lifelessly staring eyes, the obvious signs of their deaths evident in the patterns of blood loss and wounds visible on their bodies, made her skin crawl. She felt tears in her eyes and bile rising at the back of her throat. These men, who'd helped bring about her torment only days earlier, were hateful to her, frightening even in death; she didn't want to be anywhere near them.

_They're j__ust bodies, _she reminded herself, taking a steadying breath as her limbs continued to shake. Moriarty wouldn't be unconscious forever; Moran couldn't be far away; and she was losing her strength.

She didn't have time to be afraid.

Closing her eyes, she made her way to the stairs, committed to her escape plan. As she trod trembling and barefoot through the grime beside the murdered men and circled her hand around the doorknob, a sound at the door opposite her drew her attention away.

"Molly!"

She turned, her breath hitched in her throat as _his_ familiar silhouette filled the doorway that led to the back garden, the one opposite the door she had chosen. She almost smiled, nearly giving in to the sweet relief that flooded her body.

_Sherlock?_

A strangled gasp escaped her throat, muffled against the half-gag over her mouth. She started back down the steps, weakly, as her knees began to buckle. She was going to fall.

"NO!" someone cried.

A hand reached out and circled Molly's waist, pulling her back to where she'd just been, up the stairs and away from safety. The cold metal of a gun barrel pressed against her temple. Gutted, Molly sagged against the body holding her, deciding it was useless to fight. She had nothing left.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Holmes," Moran hissed into Molly's ear. "Nice of you to join us."

* * *

"Put the gun down!" Lestrade ordered.

Sherlock struggled to focus his eyes as they adjusted to the darkness of the room, far thicker and more oppressive than the darkness outside. Still, he saw the open doorway, where the water was coming from; he saw the bodies of the henchmen in the corner; and of course he saw Molly being held up with a gun to her head across the room from him.

He caught her eyes, and saw her defeat. His blood boiled.

"Oh, now that wouldn't be much fun, would it?" Moran asked. Molly slipped down against his body and Moran stooped to scoop her up with the arm that constrained her tightly to his chest. "Bit cold in here, innit? Poor girl's likely to freeze anyway, in spite of her valiant escape attempt." He shook her gently and chuckled when she offered no resistance.

"Let her go," Sherlock demanded.

"What would I get in return?"

"Free room and board courtesy of the British taxpayer," Lestrade said. He cocked his gun.

Moran cocked his, and Molly winced. "You're not gonna win this one, copper."

"Where's Moriarty?" Lestrade asked.

Almost the instant the question had been asked, out from around the doorway to their left stepped the suited but bloody Moriarty. He held a hand to his nose and staggered a bit as he exited the room. He was about to open his mouth when Moran turned his gun from Molly's head and aimed it at the injured man, firing a single shot from across the room that struck Moriarty in the side of the head above the ear. He remained standing for a second before his body crumpled and fell down and backwards. He landed with a dull thud against the wall before sliding to the floor, a spreading puddle of blood escaping from the gruesome exit wound.

Molly's whimper evidenced her fright, and in her meek struggle to get free she began to cry; Sherlock took a half step forward, desperate to reach her, but Moran only had to tilt his head to the side to intimidate Sherlock into halting.

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Moran hissed, making a face. "I'm certifiable. I've been sectioned. I'm a heartless murdering ex-military maniac and I have no compunction about killing again." He pressed the barrel of the gun harder against Molly's temple. "You might want to step off."

Sherlock called his bluff. "But that's not Moriarty, is it?"

Moran flinched and fell silent, staring at Sherlock for a long moment before grinning and clucking his tongue. "Oh, you're better than they led me to believe," he chuckled. "Though he was close enough to fool all of you, wasn't he?"

Sherlock looked to the dead man lying on the floor. It had been a stab in the dark, his guess that the Moriarty he had been conversing with wasn't actually the real Moriarty. Ever since the first poorly lit video call with the garbled audio, and especially after the pixelated and grainy camera feed—on a brand new, state-of-the-art IP camera, traveling to a brand new smartphone, over high speed 4G data networks, all of which should have produced quality far above what he'd witnessed—his suspicions had been piqued. Combined with the fact that a second-in-commend, no matter how crazy, would have to be extraordinarily desperate to murder his boss and Moran, for all his protestations, was calm and collected as could be, and Sherlock had made an off-the-cuff deduction.

He truly hadn't expected to be right.

"I think you'll find the Harley Street surgeries are _very _good provided you start with someone who looks similar enough already," Moran continued, gesturing to the man on the floor. "He had that naturally ruthless disposition when we culled him from the ranks, and the height was right, with good bone structure to work with. A minor rhinoplasty, some jaw bone shaving, a facelift, and the rest was set dressing—coloured contacts, manicure, the right suits, a bit of stubble here and there," Moran chuckled. "In fact, getting the accent right was the trickiest! He's from Leeds, can you believe it?"

"And the _real _Jim Moriarty?" Sherlock asked.

Moran's voice dropped dangerously low, sending shivers up Sherlock's spine. "You were there, Sherlock. He blew his brains out. You watched him die on a hospital rooftop three years ago, didn't you?"

"Moran—"

"I really should be more pleased with this: the great detective Sherlock Holmes begging at my feet for the release of his girlfriend!" Moran _tsked_. "Pity, because this never had anything to do with you. I really wanted to see Doctor Watson again."

"What do you want with John?" Lestrade asked.

Moran ignored the question. "'Course, he's probably gone off to that wife of his. She's the real lynchpin, isn't she?"

Sherlock shook his head, his eyes flitting from Moran to Molly, who was still shivering uncontrollably and very nearly passed out in Moran's arms. "How is she the lynchpin?" Sherlock asked.

Moran chuckled. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I would very much like to," Sherlock said, inching towards him. "Let's let Miss Hooper go and we can discuss this as men do."

"What, over cigars and brandy in the sitting room? And lose my leverage?" Moran asked, shaking his head. "Hardly seems a fair deal on my end. But I'll tell what I will agree to: you can choose. Save Miss Hooper, or save Mrs. Watson."

Molly's face registered her reaction—a kind of contemptuous resignation, written in her eyes and the sudden defensive stance her feet had moved to, as if bracing herself for what might come.

"What's going to happen to Mary?" Sherlock asked, advancing by another inch or two. "What do you mean 'save her?'"

"Sherlock!" Lestrade hissed. "Step back!"

"Ah!" Moran said, stepping back and adjusting his grip on Molly once again as her her legs gave out. He tightened his arm around her waist; Sherlock could hear her wheezing breaths, more and more laboured with each moment. "This poor creature, sopping wet and freezing cold. Not much time to choose, Mr. Holmes. Tick tock tick tock!"

There was time for Mary, he hoped. At the very least, she had her past and those skills that would have prepared her for life-threatening situations like this. She could handle herself; she knew what she was getting into. Molly was a quiet specialist registrar, with a cat and a fondness for acrylic knitwear, who hadn't signed up for this but had done everything right anyway. And there she was inside his head, clear as day, telling him what to do.

_Save Mary. Save their baby._

Sherlock was done. He took in the extent of Molly's injuries, recalling the things she'd been put through. He saw the unconscious tremble in her hands, how she desperately held herself up on shivering legs; her eyes, bold but tired, told him without a doubt that he knew exactly what she would have him do.

And he wouldn't do it.

_Save her. It's the right thing, Sherlock, and you know it..._

"Like hell," he muttered, as much to Mind Palace Molly as to Moran himself, making his decision and plunging headlong into the distance between them. Moran reacted, shoving Molly away from him in order to propel up the stairs and presumably out into Baker Street from the main floor level. As her weakened legs gave out from under her, Molly toppled forward into Sherlock's outstretched arms. Lestrade fired three bullets at Moran's retreating figure; two of the bullets lodged in the wall, while the third buried itself in Moran's shoulder as he disappeared up the stairs.

Lestrade barked into the two-way radio for his backup to cover the front door, while Sherlock hauled Molly's ragdoll body against his. "Molly?"

The force of her shivering shook Sherlock's body as well as her own. He shrugged off his Belstaff and, without losing his grip of her body, wrapped it around her shoulders before cradling her against him. She tried to hold on, but her arms seemed useless at her side. Sherlock carefully peeled the strip of tape from her lips and folded her into his arms.

"I'm okay," she whispered.

"You're okay," he replied, his voice cracking as he spoke.

She was still shivering, violently, and Sherlock tightened his grip on her body, folding her against him. "You should've picked Mary."

Sherlock clutched her closer as the sound of gunfire echoing in the streets momentarily called his attention away.

Lestrade pressed the button on his two-way. "Report!" he ordered.

"I'm taking her home," Sherlock said. "Medics should be here soon."

Lestrade let his hand rest against Molly's shoulder, his heartache plainly evident in his face. "Get her out of here."

Sherlock didn't need to be told twice.

They parted ways, Lestrade heading through the door Moran had taken while Sherlock retraced his footsteps in the snow through the communal backyard to Mrs. Hudson's garden door. She stood at the ready, silhouetted by her kitchen light, clutching her lilac cardigan tightly closed against her chest.

"Sherlock!" she gasped. "Oh my word! Oh, I heard gunshots!" She looked down to Molly's face and cursed under her breath. "I took the liberty—"

Sherlock already knew what she was going to say. He charged through her kitchen and into the foyer, careful to avoid jostling Molly's body for fear of sending her into hypothermic shock; Mrs. Hudson was at his heels. In his arms Molly felt leaden, and Sherlock clutched her tighter as he reached the top of the stairs, turned down the hall, and found his bed already cleared off. He deposited her on top of the sheets.

"What do you need?" Mrs. Hudson asked.

"Towels. Warm fluids. Dry clothes," he said, his eyes not leaving Molly's face.

Mrs. Hudson repeated his words to herself as she bustled out of the room.

He combed strands of wet hair from her skin with the tips of his fingers. "Sherlock?" she whispered.

He leaned over her, stroking her face. "Yes Molly?"

"You found me."

He drew his coat ever closer around her still shivering shoulders, and she laboured to pull herself over until she lay curled against him, her head on his thigh. Sherlock leaned over her, his arms wrapping themselves protectively around her back and shoulders. Then Molly started to cry.


	16. Dance

****A/N: I know the Watson/Morstan wedding probably didn't take place at this particular Orangery, and I know it wasn't filmed there, but during my last visit to London in January last year I spent a lot of time in Holland Park and when I started writing this scene, thinking of "The Sign of Three", this was the only location that came to mind. I figured "_Why fight it...write what you know!_" Hope that doesn't screw with anyone's headcanon too badly!****

* * *

10 August 2014  
Holland Park Orangery   
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

_Molly watched him move awkwardly through the dancers crowding the makeshift floor at one end of the long room. People bumped him as he walked, apologized, offering their hands in congratulations for his unconventional speech or his emotional violin performance for the first dance only moments earlier. He shook their hands, of course, self-consciously accepting the praise he almost certainly didn't feel he deserved. In his mind, Molly knew, all he believed he'd done was play a role; the fact that he'd done so with such stunning aplomb was entirely lost to him. After every handshake and smile had faded, he was just Sherlock again, painfully adrift in a sea of strangers kept disparate by his intellect, his awkward lack of meaningful social skills, and an ineffable sadness._

_She might not have noticed that emotion, etched into his face with each interaction on that dance floor, but for the fact that she knew it was the same face she was wearing too. Forced placidity that belied an inner unrest._

_Did nobody else see it in him?_

_She turned back to Tom, who thrashed and wiggled his body in jerky contortions he might have thought were dance moves but which looked rather suspiciously like upright tonic-clonic seizures. Eyes closed, he joined in the rousing chorus with the rest of the room, his voice loud and off-key as he shout-sang the words. Molly tucked and tightened the bow fastened into her ponytail and smiled a little, letting her hips sway in time with The Four Seasons song that still blared loudly over the speakers and echoed throughout the Orangery._

Oh what a night, indeed,_ she thought to herself._

_Tom reached for her, grabbing her hands and moving, out of step, to the beat. She laughed it off, but his social awkwardness suddenly felt like too much of a burden to carry on her own._

_The four fork-tine shaped tears in Tom's trouser leg were glaring proof of that fact._

"_Dance with me!" Tom shouted over the music._

_Molly shrugged and smiled, bobbing her head along with the song, but when she saw Sherlock take his coat from the back of his chair at the head table and make his way for the large arched garden door at the back of the hall, she slowed down._

"_You know what?" she said. "I think I just…maybe I'll just get some air."_

_Tom stooped, cupping his hand behind his ear to better hear her. "What?"_

_She pointed to the garden. "I'll be right back."_

_He flashed her a thumbs up and proceeded to fling himself around his little corner of the room, next to the sweets table, lacking grace and coordination in equal measure. Molly shook her head as she __skirted the parquet and snatched her pale yellow cardigan off the back of her chair before beelining for the same door Sherlock had exited moments before. _

_Standing there, on the edge of the cool, darkened courtyard, she could barely make out the walkway. __But she knew the sound of his stride anywhere, and heard it striking the cobblestones some way on ahead of her. Trustingly, she stepped onto the path._

_"Found you, Sherlock," she grinned into the darkness._

_The footsteps slowed, then ceased, and Molly—who had launched full-tilt into the park—halted. As her eyes adjusted, she made out the tall, angular silhouette in front of her._

"_Molly?"_

"_Where are you going?" she asked, walking out to meet him. She clutched her arms around her body as a small breeze prickled her skin, and suddenly wished she'd brought a heavier sweater._

"_Are you daft, woman?"_

"_What?" Molly shook her head, but as Sherlock approached she saw he'd already removed his long coat and was holding it out towards her. _

_When he was close enough for the faraway light from the Orangery to illuminate his face, he draped the coat over her shoulders, swinging it around her body and smoothing it down her arms. __"It's freezing out," he told her._

_Molly looked down at herself; even in heels, the great Belstaff puddled against the stones, obscuring her feet. "Thanks," she whispered, drawing the edge of the coat together in front of her. She could smell him—his cologne? aftershave?—on the lapel, and thought distantly about the fact that the heavy warmth she felt enveloping her was partially his body heat. She blushed. "Where are you off to? The party's just starting."_

_To say he looked surprised would have understated the expression he wore. Molly was almost convinced that the great consulting detective was at a total and complete loss for words. He seemed anxious as he undid his scarf, pulling it so it draped around his neck once instead of doubled up like he always wore it. "I was just stretching my legs," he answered. "Now that the job is done, you know, and the stress is over—"_

"_Were you that nervous?" Molly asked. "I thought you were marvellous."_

"_When?"_

_She laughed. "Your speech. You said such lovely things, really. Even with all the sleuthing and excitement…oh! And the violin was…well, you couldn't tell you were nervous, if you were."_

"_I wasn't nervous," he told her. "But performing the function of Best Man can be taxing and stressful and—have you ever been a member of someone's wedding party? A bridesmaid?"_

_Molly shook her head. "None of my friends are married. Caroline very nearly was once, but Meena never will be," Molly laughed. "You know what's funny about her? She won't date anyone born before John Lennon died. __Isn't that strange?"_

_Sherlock wrinkled his nose. "Seems rather arbitrary."_

_"Well she's quite the Beatles fan."_

_"Isn't everyone?"_

_Molly chuckled. "_You_ don't seem the type."_

_Sherlock smirked with only the left side of his mouth as he leaned down towards her and lowered his voice, conspiratorially. "I keep my copy of Sgt. Pepper hidden inside the record sleeve for the Brandenburg Concertos."_

_Molly chuckled, and watched as Sherlock's smirk became a smile—a rare genuine one._

"_Shocking, I must say," she grinned. "Whatever are we going to do with you, Mr. Holmes?"_

_Sherlock shrugged, shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers._

_Molly angled her head. "You, erm...weren't planning on coming back in, were you? After you stretched your legs?"_

_He glanced over her shoulder towards the Orangery once more. "No, I wasn't."_

_She looked down at her feet, took a stab at it. "That's too bad. I was hoping for a dance with a capable partner."_

_"Not Tom?"_

_Molly made a face, attempting to be diplomatic. "He doesn't trip the light fantastic. He just trips."_

_Sherlock tsked. "And what makes you think I'm any better?"_

"_Well, I-I saw you. Practicing…" she paused, wondering if she should say the thing she wanted to say next, and deciding in the two second-long interval in between that she would say it, consequences be damned. "Practicing with that awful bridesmaid—Janice or Jacqui or whatever it is. You know, she seemed rather sweet on you all day. But then I saw her dancing with that weird looking bloke?"_

_Sherlock straightened. "How did you—?"_

_She shook her head, incensed. "It's always the pretty ones. They just expect men to keep coming, always, because they always have. And they always will."_

"_There was nothing special between Janine and I."_

_Molly smiled, reaching out from beneath the heavy coat to straighten Sherlock's tie, which had sat crookedly in the notch of his dress shirt from the moment he unlooped his scarf. "If you say so," she whispered._

_Enough time had passed that the music drifting out from the dance floor had changed, and Van Morrison's unmistakable croon was picked up by the breeze and carried to Molly's ears. As she smoothed out the dimpled knot beneath her fingers, she knew Sherlock had heard it too._

"_Would you dance with me now?" he asked suddenly._

"_Here?''_

"_Or not—I just thought—"_

_His eyes betrayed his feelings to her the instant she looked up at him. Conflicted, vulnerable, afraid, desiring—all at once. She wondered if he was reading her eyes, but then of course she knew he was. So she smiled, because it truly was what she wanted, and he softened, and she slid her right hand into his. Sherlock found the curve of her hip, where he rested his hand, as Molly wrapped her hand around his shoulder, and as the first verse began, the two started to sway, back and forth on the cobbles._

"_This is nice," she told him. "See? You are a good dancer."_

_His fingers flexed against her hip, pulling her closer by a matter of degrees. She stood near enough to feel his warmth directly; intoxicated, she let herself be danced with._

"_Does dancing relax you?"_

_She nodded. "How can you tell?"_

"_Your heart rate has decreased significantly," he said. "You no longer seem as tightly wound as you have been all day."_

_Molly swallowed._ "_I've seemed that way?"_

_She felt him nod; she was standing so close to him, his breath against her ear made her shiver._

"_Are you still cold?"_

"_No, I'm not."_

_He frowned at her, removing his hand from hers and peeling his scarf off from around his neck before winding it gently around hers, doubling it over and threading the loose end through the fold. She shut her eyes and hunched her shoulders, bringing the faint plaid pattern to her chin and delighting in the scent that rose with it._

_"Do I look like you?" she asked, dramatically arching her eyebrow for effect._

_He made a show of studying her. "Nearly," he said. "But you see, if you did indeed look enough like me to replace me, since there can't be two of us, that would mean _I'd _have to strive to look like _you_, and..." he fingered the large bow in her hair. "I just don't think I can pull of this shade of yellow."_

_"I could never replace you," Molly said, in all seriousness._

_He nodded, sheepish. "Well, what I meant was__—"_

"_Sherlock?"_

"_Hm?"_

_She paused. "Do you ever think about—when we…? That is, does it ever cross your mind? Or no…" she smiled, turning her face away in embarrassment. "Of course not. You wouldn't—"_

"_Are you in the habit of holding entire conversations on your own like this very often?"_

_She giggled. "Often enough."_

_He smiled but didn't say anything for a long while. The question she'd asked seemed forgotten; Molly thought it was all for the best anyway; she pressed her cheek to Sherlock's chest and sighed._

"_Do _you_ think about it?"_

_Her heart landed in her throat and her stomach hit the stones beneath her. She froze, unable to think, let alone speak._

_"Molly?"_

_The way his voice resonated against her ear, pressed to his chest just below the seat and origin of that baritone, made her swoon. She sighed. "Am I a terrible person if I say yes?"_

_"Are you saying yes?"_

_She paused. "I might be."_

_His lips pressed against her hair. "You're not a terrible person, Molly."_

_Another pause; barely room for a breath. "But I didn't wait for you."_

"_I asked you not to."_

"_All the same, you kept your end of the bargain."_

"_Which was?"_

"_To come back…"_

_Sherlock's hand was now firmly in the small of her back, and Molly swore if she danced any closer to him they'd be the same person. It had been over two years, she knew; not a day went by that she didn't think on their assignation. Pressing her body against the length of his, she was finding it hard to think of anything but._

"_All the time," she whispered. "I think about it all the time."_

_He was quiet for a long moment. "Do you regret that it ever happened?"_

_Molly shook her head, which now rested comfortably against the centre of his chest, directly beneath his chin. "I regret that it only happened once."_

_He pulled away, slightly, to look down at her. "Even though you've moved on?"_

_Molly blinked and chewed on her lip; for a split second she blanked on the name of her fiancé. "I'd hardly call in moving on when the current beau is a crude facsimile of—"_

_Sherlock surprised her by kissing her—gently—on the lips, cutting off her words before they'd had a chance to form. The movement caused his coat to fall from her shoulders where it landed in a heap on the ground behind her. Her startled gasp—from the sudden shock of cool air and the feeling of his lips against hers, petered out before it left her throat, becoming a breathy sigh instead. She removed her hands from where they were to press them against his chest, around his shoulders, before burying them in the hair at the base of his neck. Slanting his mouth across hers, he captured her face with one hand and hauled her against him with the the other, deepening the kiss considerably as she folded against him._

_She _had_ missed this…_

_But it was short-lived. He pulled his lips from hers, and she winced at the sundering._

"_This is wrong."_

_In desperation she tiptoed against his body. "Don't worry about…what's-his-name."_

"_No," Sherlock replied, holding her at arm's length. "Molly, I'm to start a case soon. One that would require weeks, if not months, of undercover work..."_

_She cast her eyes up at him. "Is it dangerous?"_

"_Almost certainly."_ _He wasn't bragging, but to the untrained ear it wouldn't have sounded far off. "At the very least, it will be taking up a considerable portion of my time and energy. To involve you in anything—or to suddenly be involved myself..."_

_Molly cleared her throat. "Do you want my help?"_

_He shook his head. "I can't allow that, not this time. This man, the one I'm to deal with—he is…brilliant and cold and I believe fiercer and more merciless than any opponent I have faced…"_

_She straightened in his arms. "Well then tell me what I _can_ do."_

_His frown set creases in his forehead that Molly was worried he'd never erase. "Molly, do you remember everything I taught you? Should anything have gone wrong while I was on the run?"_

_She nodded slowly, remembering his instructions. "Yes—yes, I think so. I even took a class for a while, at the community centre__—"_

_He narrowed his eyes. "If you feel you are in danger, what is the first thing you are to do?" he quizzed._

_Molly frowned._ "_The email, right?"_

_He nodded. "Right. If you're in danger, if someone is watching you or you think they are, it is vital that you send the email and then go about your day as absolutely normally as possible. Do not deviate from your routine after that. That's very important. You don't want to arouse suspicion."_

"_But who will be watching?" she asked. "What are you talking about?"_

"_Just listen, Molly," he told her. "If you find yourself being followed, try and stay around as many people as possible. In a crowd, can. But proceed directly home. Do you understand me? Wherever possible, get home as fast as you can."_

_Molly's voice wavered. "Okay."_

"_Surround yourself with people," Sherlock continued. "Take the Tube, walk the busiest routes, invite your neighbour in for coffee. As long as there are witnesses, you'll be buying yourself time. The people who may want you, they'll wait until they can get you, with minimal hassle and no witnesses to mess things up."_

"_Sherlock—"_

"_If they take you—" his voice hitched. "No. If you know you are about to be taken, or if you need to go into hiding, leave me clues. Nothing obvious, nothing that would tip anyone else off, nothing explicit or detailed. Simple, hidden. But make sure to leave clues, and from that I'll be able to find you."_

_"You will?"_

_"Of course," he said, as if the thought of doing anything else hadn't even crossed his mind. "Molly, I'll always find you."_

_She squeezed his hand. "Sherlock, you're scaring me."_

"_I'm sorry," he said, his concern palpable. He took a small step towards her, placing his hands on either side of . "I don't—I don't mean mean to."_

_Molly nodded. "Then why are you telling me all of this?"_

"_Because I might not be here to watch out for you for a while. John and Mary have each other, and Lestrade's division...well, and I wouldn't dream of subjecting you to Mycroft, so that really leaves no one I trust enough to leave you with if you need help…" he said. "Except for you. I trust you."_

_Molly stood up straight. "You do?"_

_He nodded. "Implicitly." _

_Molly stood for a while, stock still, while she took in the information he was laying at her feet. She shivered. _"_Why are you so concerned about me?"_

_Sherlock ran his hands up and down her arms. "Well, I've grown quite fond of you, Molly and__—__"_

_"Fond?"_

_The same stricken look befell his face as had done earlier during his speech, when the Orangery had filled with the sound of sniffling and tears. He frowned "Have I said something wrong?"_

_She laughed out loud. "Not at all," she said. "Quite the opposite. That may have been the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time."_

_Skeptical, Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "Then your laughter is borne out of nervousness? Incredulity?"_

_Molly shrugged. "Reciprocity and surprise, I think," she told him. "I'm quite fond of you, as well."_

"_Well that much is obvious," he replied, and Molly let out another laugh, one that shook her shoulders and forced her to cover her mouth with her hand. Sherlock's perturbation hit new heights. "Really, I had no idea that the finer points of social nicety would be so tedious to learn…"_

"_Oh, Sherlock," Molly sighed._

"_My concern is for your well-being," he snapped, continuing onward from her earlier line of questioning. "But it is also I admit rather selfish. If anything were to happen to you—"_

"_Well nothing will happen," she told him. "So quit worrying about it, yeah?"_

_He regarded her with a faraway, crinkle-eyed tenderness that made her breath hitch in her chest. His frustration disappeared; all that was left was the moonlight between them._

"_What's-his-name?" Sherlock queried after a spell. "Really, Molly…"_

_She smiled, knowing she should feel guilty but completely unable to summon it, and leaned up on her toes to kiss him, a peck against his lips that left her teetering drunkenly and holding his shoulders for balance._

"_I've got to go."_

"_You really can't stay?"_

_He wavered. "I shouldn't think so."_

_Molly felt herself growing desperate. So much progress in such a short time. _Imagine what could happen by the end of the night, _she thought. A couple more dances, a few more drinks, a cab ride home…his breath on her neck and her key in the lock…_

Fiancé? What fiancé? _she thought, lightly fingering the ring on her finger, suddenly two sizes too tight for everything that seemed to be happening all at once._

"_Undercover?" she nodded. "And you don't know for how long?"_

"_Not presently."_

_She continued to nod, putting on a brave face. "Well, Sherlock Holmes, you just promise to come back okay?"_

_He smiled again, lips curling at the corners to match the squint in his eyes. "I will."_

_She smoothed her hands once more against his shirt, his tie, across the broad expanse of his shoulders. "Good. That's good."_

_He stooped to retrieve his jacket from the ground. "Thank you for the dance, Molly Hooper."_

_"My pleasure."_

_He nodded and shrugged his coat over his shoulders, pausing to give her one more look over before heading back towards the expanse of parkland that separated him from the High Street. Molly stepped slowly, backwards, towards the Orangery once more._

_John stopped her as she made her way back to the table; "Tainted Love" blared from the DJ booth. "Have you seen Sherlock?" he asked, before taking in the sight of her. He pointed his finger at her neck. "Is that his scarf?"_

_Molly's hand flew to her chest where, indeed, his carefully secured scarf still sat. Bashful, she felt her face flush as she pulled it from her shoulders, sending a waft of scent to her nostrils as she did. "Yes...it is. Don't really have a very good explanation for why I'm wearing it, except..." she mimed the drinking of a shot, and John's eyes widened._

"_You and Sherlock?" he demanded. "Doing shots? Was it tequila? Oh this I've got to see!"_

_Molly gave a short laugh. "He just needed some air, John. I think everything that happened today was just a bit overwhelming." It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth either._

"_Oh," John replied, deflating slightly. "Well that's a bit of a drag. Not that he's gone, but that I won't get to see him pissed out of his mind…"_

_Molly grinned, spotting Tom still flailing, this time nearer to the DJ. "I should go check in with Tom. He doesn't really know anyone…"_

"_Right," John smiled, glancing over at the lanky man by the speakers. "So have you two set a date yet?"_

"_Ah, well, you know…" she shrugged._

"_Yeah," John nodded; he gave her a sage glance before reaching out and stroking her shoulder. "Save me a dance, will you?"_

"'_Course!" she grinned. "As long as your wife won't mind."_

_John's eyes lit up as he laughed. "My wife! I have a wife. My wife," he said. "God, I'm never gonna get tired of saying that. Where is my wife?" _

_Molly laughed as John marched off, an idiot grin plastered on his mug. She started back to her seat, and as she did s__he folded Sherlock's scarf into a neat and tight square, which she slid down inside her clutch once she got to her table._

"_Where were you?" Tom asked as he came up behind her._

_She spun around, meeting his eye, and realized she didn't have the fight in her anymore. She ran her thumb around the band of his ring, wrapped so tightly around her finger. _It's too much_, she thought. With a heavy sigh, she offered the only thing she could. "Tom, I think we should talk..."_


	17. Conversations

30 December 2014  
Baker Street  
8:00pm

Outside the snow had started falling in thicker and thicker tufts as night spread her luxury over London. Baker Street was blanketed; police officers left dark footprints that filled in within minutes of being made by the flakes from the sky. Sherlock watched those officers—four cruisers worth—as they combed the streets and alleys for clues, processed the crime scene next door, tracked the movements of the man who'd escaped, and took turns telling off crowds of rubberneckers forming on the peripheral sidewalks or leaning out their windows from above.

Normally this was the part of the case where Lestrade would call him in: to survey for clues and gather evidence. He loved this part, the showing up and showing off. But tonight that wasn't his role. Tonight, he was not Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. He was Sherlock, concerned friend. And he was glad for the distance that role provided him. He didn't want to be the one to sort it out.

He wanted to hold Molly Hooper impossibly close and help her forget that any of it had ever happened. And then he wanted to forget it too.

From the bathroom down the hall came the sounds of water running and Mrs. Hudson's hushed voice as she helped Molly bathe. That was the one thing Molly had said, repeatedly, during her examination by the medics: _I need to clean up_. It had crept into her police statement, given to Lestrade as she perched on the edge of Sherlock's bed, still wearing his Belstaff and clutching at the bed linens: _I need to clean up._Over and over again. A mantra. She had only stopped when the flat cleared and Mrs. Hudson finally took her hand and led her to the bath. They'd been in there for half an hour now.

In the meantime, Sherlock had built a fire. He'd changed out of his clothes—they were filthy from the basement and he'd been wearing them since the day before—and cleaned his room, straightening the bed and disposing of the refuse left behind by the paramedics. He fixed a small plate of food—crisps and cheese and a few grapes and a handful of his mother's ginger snaps left over from Christmas—for when Molly emerged from the bath, because he'd heard her stomach grumbling when she'd taken the tea Mrs. Hudson had offered, and knew without needing to be told that she hadn't eaten anything since the whole ordeal had began just over 48 hours earlier.

_48 hours...that's all. Seems like a lifetime._

Sherlock turned his attention back to the window in time to see Lestrade step out onto the sidewalk from the door to the Singh's home and wave someone over from beyond the barricade that had been set up a few houses down the way. Lestrade's look was one of confusion and shock, and he stopped the man as he neared, engaging him in direct conversation for a long moment before allowing him to pass. The man cast one glance up at the parlour window, catching Sherlock's eye, before going up to the door and pushing his way in.

"Sherlock?"

The detective whirled around. "John, what are you doing here?"

"Why didn't you call?" he asked. "Where's Molly? Is she okay? Did you catch Moriarty? Colonel Moran?"

"John," Sherlock asked, more forcefully. "_What_ are you doing here? Where's Mary?"

John shook his head. "Brighton. She went away for the New Year," he said. "I'm going up to meet her tomorrow, and—"

"Are you sure? She's okay?" Sherlock asked.

"Yes, I'm sure," John replied, wearing his annoyance openly on his face as he fished out his phone from his pocket and thumbed through her texts. "See? She's fine," he said, handing the mobile to Sherlock. "Where's Molly?"

Sherlock read through each text, all reassuring and candid messages that indicated nothing of the harm he'd believed was soon to befall her based on Moran's cryptic warnings; Mary hadn't replied to John's last text, which had been sent over two hours earlier. It did give him pause, and that confusion over the whole matter blocked any sense of relief he might have felt at hearing that Mary was, seemingly, not in any danger.

"Molly's having a bath," Sherlock replied, glancing over John's shoulder and down the hall. "Mrs. Hudson's in with her."

John let out a heavy exhale. "Is she all right?"

"Medics say her injuries are largely superficial," Sherlock replied. "They should heal on their own given a few days' rest and home care."

John shrugged off his coat; Sherlock noticed he had his emergency bag with him. "I can't believe you didn't call me. Didn't I tell you that I wanted to be here?"

Sherlock was at a total loss for words. _What could you have said? 'Sorry John, I still think your wife is in trouble, but hold on just a tick, would you mind coming 'round to check on Molly?' _He sighed. "I just...we had it covered, and there were other, more important places for you to be."

John sank into his chair as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do. "I don't know what you and Mycroft and now—_apparently_—Greg Lestrade think is going on, but unless you're willing to finally let me in on this big secret that you have about Mary I'd recommend leaving the worrying and cryptic comments to yourself, yeah?"

Sherlock still held John's phone in his hands. He fingered the casing, focusing his attention on buttons and bevels instead of on John, wondering how to respond. Finally, he passed the handset back. "Are you going to tell Mary that Molly's okay?" he said.

John shook his head as he pocketed the phone. "I think it can wait. You know if I did she would be in the next car over here to nurse her, and she's in no condition...," he shrugged. "She'll be angry when she finds out I didn't tell her, but—" The doctor trailed off as he looked back to Sherlock. "Are you all right?"

Sherlock dropped into his chair, staring at the fire. "How do you know what to do?"

John's face registered his confusion in exactly the same way it always had: a half-smile, a quick shake of his head. "What do you mean?"

"I mean—" Sherlock paused, hitting on an idea he'd never considered before. "How do you make a decision that affects someone you care about without their input?"

John was clueless. "Sherlock, I don't—"

Sherlock pushed forward. "With Mary, you knew that her reaction would be one of concern and that she would forgo all thought to her own well-being in order to help Molly?"

"...Yes."

"So you've made the decision to withhold that information from her until some future moment when it was ultimately more convenient for her to know?"

"Not exactly," John wavered. "I mean, she's pregnant and throws up a lot. You can't exactly expect someone in that condition to deal with a certifiable madman Lazarusing himself back to life and kidnapping your friend and…"

Sherlock continued to look confused. "Still, you assessed all the possible outcomes and determined the best course of action, which you then unilaterally put into place thinking only of Mary's safety."

John nodded. "Well…yeah, actually. I'd do anything to keep her safe," he said. "She's my wife. I love her."

Sherlock sighed. "I'm more than a little out of my league, John. That's not easy for me to admit."

His friend leaned back in his chair but was pensive, quiet, watching Sherlock intently.

"In any normal situation, I would have known exactly what to do. The facts were there. I would have read it and understood…" he paused. "I wouldn't have panicked."

"Sherlock, what exactly are we talking about here?"

He shook his head. Fatigue he'd forgotten about lived in his bones. He swore he had never felt so tired, so drained, in all his life. He didn't know what to think anymore. "I keep thinking about what I should have done differently, what I might have done to protect her. Should I have not allowed her to help me? Should I have imposed upon Lestrade to provide her with a round-the-clock protective detail? Should I have taken on the task of her self-defence education myself more directly?" he paused, but only briefly. "If I'd been paying attention instead of—"

"Instead of what?" John asked. "You did the job. Molly is here, safe, and she will recover. With your help."

"And I never want her to leave my sight again, if it's the only way I can make sure nothing like this ever happens to her again," Sherlock announced suddenly. "I made a thousand decisions about Molly that led to a number of very poor actions on my part, all because I was blinded by…"

For a moment, John let Sherlock's sentence-ending preposition dangle there unresolved. He could see the pain in his friend's eyes; it was so strong he could almost feel it three feet away. "Sherlock," he cleared his throat finally. "Do you…do you love her?"

Sherlock paused for a moment, counting up to ten and back down again while he perused the depths of his mind for an answer. "I don't know," he answered finally. "But it must be the nearest thing I believe I've ever felt."

John did his admirable best to contain his shock. "And all those years, I thought you just using her for her lab equipment."

Sherlock looked down at his hands. "Molly has _always_ been singularly important to me, longer than almost anyone else. She's accomplished, and intelligent and observant assistant. Exceptionally bright. She exhibits rather questionable taste in fashion and her cooking skills would make experienced chefs weep, but she more than makes up for it in so many other ways that are far more important." He swallowed. "Losing her—indeed just the _thought _of it—came close to shattering me."

He swallowed, beginning again but far more softly. "So how do you do it? How do you make decisions that affect another person while simultaneously caring deeply for that person, all without crippling yourself emotionally?"

John scoffed softly. "I think you just described the pitfalls of modern romance. Although in this case, admittedly, without any of the benefits—" he stopped, glancing up at Sherlock. "Benefits here being understood as—"

"Sexual relations," Sherlock nodded. "Yes, I'm aware."

"Oh. It's just—"

Sherlock stood up, grabbed the iron poker from the hearth, and pushed the logs around in the fireplace. "It continually amazes me that you all persist with the erroneous belief that I am dispossessed of genitalia or the ability or—indeed—the _desire_ to use them for procreative or masturbatory purposes," he steamed. "The boys in my school passed around lad mags same as yours, I can assure you."

John's eyes shot open. "I'm sorry—what are we—?" He retraced his words. "Are you telling me—?"

Sherlock sighed and sank into his chair once again. "I sustained an injury during my time abroad that unfortunately required medical assistance. For obvious reasons I could not be admitted to a hospital, but I couldn't continue with my mission. I arranged passage to London and made use of one of my many hideouts—the only one where I would be supervised and my wounds attended to. And that was with Molly."

"You lived with Molly?" John asked.

"Yes."

John furrowed his brow. "In her flat? _With _her."

"No John, in her car, parked on the street—_of course_ in her flat," Sherlock frowned as he continued. "For two weeks or so, in fact. And she was a more than competent and attentive nurse. Some might say 'smothering', but I was glad for it," he said, pausing over the remembrances of late nights watching television, polystyrene takeaway containers on the table; or of Molly nicking the latest issues of various medical journals from the hospital and then of the two of them reading the more interesting studies and articles together over coffee in the morning, or right before bed—Molly at one end of the sofa, her legs tucked under her, a mug of tea in her hands, while Sherlock recited statistics and results and showed her bar graphs and Venn diagrams because she was a visual learner and his descriptions failed to translate.

"Are you _grinning_?"

Sherlock snapped back to attention and wiped the stupid expression from his face. "Erm—you can understand that being with her in such close proximity for that length of time—under such tense and emotionally fraught conditions...well, one thing led to another and—"

John's stare was blank, expressionless, save for the single wrinkle above the bridge of his nose. Sherlock waited for him to speak for what felt like a considerable amount of time before John finally snapped out of it and shook his head. "Sherlock, I—"

"Yes, I agree, your brain does in fact seem quite broken," Sherlock replied. "And I fear you're missing the point of our entire conversation…"

John shook his head. "Right…well, I don't remember exactly—what were we talking about?…I mean, when you love someone…when you're in a relationship...is that what this is? A relationship? Are you _dating_ Molly Hooper? I mean, it sure would explain _a lot_…"

"Oh for God's sake, John, will you please wrangle the part of your brain that apparently remains addicted to reality television and form one—_just one_—complete sentence before the sun rises?"

John nodded and cleared his throat, but for a long moment he said nothing. After several aborted attempts at speech, he cleared his throat once more, letting his hands fall to his lap. "Well, Sherlock…" he said, "When you love someone—it feels like a part of you exists outside of yourself, just out there, walking around. And it's a terribly uncomfortable and vulnerable feeling. But in time you learn to accept it as a fact of life. Just like you accept all the things about them, their quirks, the idiosyncrasies. You grow accustomed to them. You learn to predict them. It's how I know what Mary's reaction will be, and how I know what decisions to make when it comes to her. I'm not _always_ right, not one-hundred-percent of the time. But my guess is as educated as I can make it, and that's the best you can hope for when it comes to such things." John chuckled. "I cannot believe I am sitting here giving love advice to Sherlock Holmes…"

Sherlock relaxed. "Well you were always the heart of this operation, weren't you?"

John was touched. He nervously ran the pad of his thumb over the armrest of his chair. "Which makes you the brains, I suppose?"

"Naturally," Sherlock said with a half-grin.

John chuckled. "Though I reckon you're currently in possession of the brain of an emotionally-constipated teenager," he said. "But at least you're asking the right questions."

A sound at the door downstairs drew their attention to the hallway. Sherlock watched as Lestrade rambled up the stairs, two at a time. "How is she?" he asked.

"Fine. Mrs. Hudson is helping her...wash up," Sherlock nodded down the hall. "Any luck tracking him down?"

Lestrade shook his head. "I'd like to think he's not going to get far, but..."

"What about Moriarty?" John asked.

Lestrade stared blankly before turning to Sherlock. "You didn't tell him?"

Sherlock wavered. "It wasn't the real Moriarty," he said, much to John's shock. "He was a fake. A combination of plastic surgery and elocution classes..."

John stuck his hands on his hips and then crossed them over his chest. "So Moran was behind all of this then?"

"Yes," Sherlock said.

John rocked back and forth, from the ball of one foot to the heel of his other, for several seconds before addressing Sherlock. "How long did you know? When did you realize that it wasn't Moriarty, that all of this was because of Moran?"

Sherlock heard echoes of the conversation they'd had minutes earlier within his head: _How do you make decisions that affect another person...? _"When we found Molly. It all happened then," Sherlock replied. "I didn't tell you because—"

"What did he say about her?" John asked. "About Mary?"

He swallowed hard against the emotion in his throat. "I wasn't sure what the danger was. But none of this was about Molly or even really about me. Not for Moran."

"He was after me," John said, nodding.

Lestrade picked up his phone. "John, where is Mary?"

"Brighton," he replied softly. "With friends."

He gave Lestrade the friends' names as the Inspector punched up a number in his phone and walked onto the landing to place the call; John, with a heavy sigh, sank into his chair once again.

"She'll have protection," Sherlock said.

"I know."

"John—"

"He said was going to ruin my life, Sherlock," John said. "After he attacked me, that's what he said."

"He won't."

John met his eyes. "But he'll try." He cupped his face with his hands and stared at the fire, elbows perched on his knees. "I'm so torn. I want to believe Mary but with the lies she's already told me, and the way she's acted these last few days...what if she had something to do with—?"

"You mustn't think about it that way," Sherlock admonished.

John shook his head. "I can't help it. I have no idea what was on that thumb drive, Sherlock. I never looked at it. I _wanted_ to trust her. But what if she was mixed up with Moriarty or Colonel Moran in the past? What if that was the great secret Magnussen had on her?" He lifted his hands, an open but exasperated gesture. "I have no idea. That's all that's been going through my mind since we learned Moran was here..."

Sherlock was unable to banish the thought entirely from his mind; it had been his fear, too. Still, he relaxed his posture and projected a kind of calm that he hoped John would pick up on. "If that's the case, John, then you have to remember that her while her past is set, her future is unwritten, and she chose to write it with you. Mary loves you. Of that I have no doubt."

John's weary, ironic chuckle caught Sherlock's attention. "You sleep with Molly Hooper once and suddenly you're an expert on love?"

"You slept with Molly?" Lestrade asked as he walked back into the room.

"When he was on the lam," John said, his spirits brightening slightly. He scrubbed the back of his hand across his nose and sniffled. "I keep trying to figure out the Brangelina-esque portmanteau we could use to describe them. Moll-lock, maybe? Sherlolly is fun, but…"

Sherlock groaned. "Really, this can't be the only topic of conversation that interests you at this particular juncture of the evening."

Lestrade gave it a thought. "Well now that you mention it—"

John laughed and Lestrade cleared his throat, seeing Sherlock's face deadpan.

"I called Sussex Police in Brighton," Lestrade said, more seriously. "They'll go 'round to your friends' home and see what they can do by way of protection. I can send some of my men—"

"Thanks, Greg," John said. "I'm sure it will be okay. You have investigating to do."

"Well, not exactly," Lestrade said with a sigh, causing both men to turn to him. "But even if this _was_ still my case, I'd put as many uniforms on Mary as I had to spare."

"What do you mean this isn't your case?" Sherlock asked.

"MoD took over—oh, about twenty minutes ago," he said.

_MoD?_

_Mycroft..._

Sherlock made up his mind to was about to phone his big brother when Mrs. Hudson stepped into the front parlour. She had the sleeves of her dressing gown rolled up to her elbows; her eyes, drawn and tired, smiled still as she pushed her hair off her forehead. "Oh, hello Greg. Hello John."

"Mrs. Hudson," both men said in almost unison.

"Is Molly okay?" Sherlock asked

"She's still in the bath," she replied. "Got her pretty comfortable and cleaned up. But she was asking to see you, Sherlock."

Not a moment's hesitation shadowed Sherlock's face as he struck out on the path to the door. Mrs. Hudson held up her hands, aghast. "Sherlock, surely you won't barge in on her now? She's not decent—"

"I don't think that will necessarily be a problem," John muttered.

Sherlock cast a look of disparagement across the room, but the comment had no effect on Mrs. Hudson, who simply frowned as she stepped out of his way.

"I'll make her some tea and warm up a bowl of soup for her. She'll be staying here, I won't hear another word about it," she flitted her hands in front of her, in Sherlock's direction. "I'll leave the arrangements up to you. But when you go in there, for Heaven's sake, Sherlock, be nice…"

"Right," he nodded. "Right."

All thought of the conversation he was going to insist on having with Mycroft, the one he'd just had with John, the still-festering uncertainty over Mary faded from his mind as he made his way out of the parlour. He heard Mrs. Hudson give orders to the other two—"You, Inspector, need to get some sleep, and John, you'd do well to find some shut eye yourself but let me fix you both a little something to eat first…"—but with his eyes focused on the floor, on the light leaking out from beneath the door, Sherlock took a deep breath and pushed it all to the side

He heard the sound of water running. Panic set in. He'd let her down. The marks on her body—the ones he'd see when he opened that door—would be proof of that.

_It__'__s Molly__…_he said. _Molly Hooper. Forensic pathologist. The girl you danced with under the stars in Holland Park. The one who sings off key in the shower and can__'__t properly boil water and kisses you like her life depends on it__…_

With his heart thudding against his ribcage, he pressed hand around the doorknob and waited—counting to five, and then to ten just for good measure—before lifting his knuckles and rapping them against the wood.


	18. Calm

30 December 2014  
Baker Street

Molly hated the light in the bathroom. Harsh and direct, like the lights of her morgue, they illuminated her winter-pale skin with garish clarity and cast the bruises and lacerations inflicted upon her in far too-stark relief. When Mrs. Hudson had been there, distracting her with stories from daytime television and comments about the January selection for her book club as she washed her hair and cleaned her skin, it had been easy to ignore the damage. Now that she'd gone, Molly had nothing but her own thoughts to stop her from looking. The scraped wounds stung with each caress of the water; discoloured welts on her thighs and torso burned when she moved. Acute swelling in her left shoulder made moving the joint an exercise in futility, and she was fairly certain she'd broken one of her metatarsals when she'd kicked Moriarty—_...or whoever that really was..._—judging by the pattern of bruising along the outer part of her right foot.

Sitting in tepid water that reached her hips, her knees drawn up under her chin, Molly was all too aware of her whole body. Mrs. Hudson had administered the recommended dosage of painkillers before helping her into the bath, but they had yet to take effect; her head throbbed and her stomach churned as she struggled to recall the last time she'd eaten. Such was the pain that she couldn't even shiver.

_But you're alive_, she reminded herself as she turned the tap slowly and let a stream of warmer water flood the bathtub. It was a delicious, overwhelming feeling. To be clean, and warm, and safe…

_Safe_. A feeling she thought she'd never have again, not after being shackled and beaten and violated and shamed by a man of such vicious cruelty. She'd spent so long, in the darkest moments of her captivity, steeling herself for further indignity and pain, convinced that there would never be a kind word or soft hand for her again. She'd done what she'd been taught. She'd been strong, and brave. She wouldn't let them break her then; she wasn't going to let them break her now.

But...

She _had _broken.

The very instant she'd heard his voice, saw his face, she'd given up. She didn't understand it. She had been so close. She could have twisted away. She could have leveraged their position on the step to topple Moran sideways. She could have broken free. Instead, she gave up. She stood there, passive, as events unfolded around her.

She shut her eyes as the water from the tap warmed and pained her in equal measure. Hot red shame filled her cheeks. _Maybe you'd just given up hope that he'd ever come, _she thought. _You were so prepared to save yourself, with or without him...and maybe the fact that he _did _find you...?_

Molly shivered and stopped the water. She remembered the moment when she knew it was over—_falling, foot on the stair, legs giving out, arms, his arms, warm, cradling, his coat, her head on his shoulder, carrying her,_ _a __delicate ferocity bearing her from that terrible nightmare_—and realized that it was, without a doubt, the safest she'd ever felt. Because she knew he was there, on guard, protecting her. There would be no further abuse. He'd saved her. She'd been saved.

_Safe_. The word had taken on new meaning. Externalized and no longer abstract, it was synonymous now with his name...

Three soft knocks on the door brought her out of her reverie. Startled, Molly turned towards it, noticing for the first time that she was crying. "Come in," she whispered before repeating herself, louder, as she swiped at the tears on her face.

Sherlock entered the small bathroom, his eyes shaded by what she presumed was a kind of clinical detachment forced upon him by convention and propriety—she was, after all, fully naked. But it was charming, gallant; he preserved her dignity, respected her. She loved him a little bit more for that.

"Molly," he said, trying his level best to be dispassionate and failing miserably as the word caught in his throat and broke over his teeth, betraying the considerable emotion bubbling beneath. He looked up at her, and sudden alarm crossed his face. "You're crying. Are you in pain? Shall I get John?"

She tried to smile and swept her fingers beneath her eyes. "No, Sherlock. I'm fine. I'm just—" she sighed. "These are tears of silliness and tears of gratitude and tears of relief…"

She noticed that he didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. He'd changed clothes but was still in a suit, as always; he had no belt on his hips to make an easy rest for the heel of his hands, and pockets—she knew—would seem far too casual and Sherlock would not be seen to be cavalier, not now. He had settled for fists, balled up at his sides, and he looked angry, ready for a fight. She wasn't even sure he was conscious that he was doing it. But she hated it.

Molly shivered and looked away to her knees, still drawn up against her chest. She traced the outline of the rough scrapes cross-hatched across her patella. "Don't look at me like that."

He paused before replying. "Like what?"

She stretched her legs out and let the newly warmed water wash over them. "You saved my life."

"I didn't get to you sooner."

"The fact that you got to me at all—"

"But you were next door the whole time."

"And you found me."

He shook his head. "It should never have happened."

"It did, though."

"I know."

Molly pushed her hands against the bottom of the tub and inched herself forward, adjusting her position for comfort, but the searing pain in her shoulders made the task gargantuan. The pain hadn't lessened, but she wasn't aware that she wore a grimace on her face until Sherlock stepped forward to offer assistance, stepping too quickly and frightening her as he towered beside the bath.

"I'm all right," she lied through gritted teeth, holding herself up for half a second more before giving up, exhausted as she slumped against her knees—once more drawn to her chest. "No, I'm not all right."

She was trying not to cry—the last thing she wanted to do was cry, again, in front of him. She wasn't going to be that girl. But then he stepped away from the bath and crouched instead, unbuttoning and rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt one arm at a time, and she saw that his face had softened dramatically. Gone were the edges, the hard lines, the frowns that usually knit his brows together above his nose; in their place sat an openness, a weariness, but the same sense of relief she felt. But something more, too. She'd seen him burn with thinly-veiled contempt and disdain, with conceit, with self-satisfied superiority, with amusement, with desire…but she'd never seen tenderness there, not like this. His eyes, coloured like a lake fed by glaciers and blue-green algae, had finished their analysis, their deduction. She knew then that he knew better than she did what she needed in that moment. And it wasn't another hour in a lukewarm bathtub; it wasn't stoic silence; it wasn't talking either.

It was him.

Molly needed Sherlock.

She just had to _let herself_ need him.

Still crouched beside the bath, he extended his arm to her to help her out, and the tears that welled in her eyes began to fall, and the lump in her throat strangled the sob that rose within her. The sound that escaped was somewhere between a gurgle and a cough. Moored to the floor, he reached to her and helped to her feet, lifting her when she couldn't lift herself, steadying her as she stepped out of the tub and onto the mat on the floor. He stooped to read her eyes, asking her without saying a word if she was okay while he leaned away for just a second to grab a large towel from the bathroom vanity. He wrapped it around her shoulders, inviting her to step into his embrace. She did; she crawled in. And there they stood for several long seconds, no sounds uttered save for Molly's occasional sob or relaxed "…Sssh" from Sherlock as he soothed his hands over her back.

"You'll stay here tonight." Declarative. Not a question.

"I don't want to be a nuisance. I'll sleep on the sofa—"

Sherlock pulled away from her, craning his neck down to look at her. "You'll do no such thing..." came his calm but emphatic response.

His gently commanding words, the deeply sonorous timbre of his voice, made her heart flutter. She relaxed further into his chest and nodded, then let him lead her to his room, to his bed, which he'd turned down for her. She sat on the edge of the bed, drawing the towel close around her middle. On the pillow beside her, he'd laid out a set of too-large sleep clothes for her.

"I'm afraid I don't have anything that will fit," he apologized as Molly reached out and lifted the soft, pale blue cotton t-shirt to her nose and inhaled the scent. "They're clean, I promise," he added.

Toby meandered into the room and leapt up onto the bed, and Molly smiled wide for the first time as the feline purred his greeting to her and bunted her nose with the top of his head.

"Silly cat," she whispered. "You brought him here?"

"Of course," he answered. "I couldn't leave him alone."

Molly shook her head and kissed Toby between the ears. "Lucky cat, getting to live large on Baker Street."

Sherlock stood beside the bed, looming over her, and even though she knew who he was, the way his body filled the space once again made her uneasy. She opened her mouth to ask him to sit, but he'd already deduced it, as he always did, and made the move to sit a discreet distance away from her on the edge of the bed instead.

"Sorry."

"No, it's okay," she said. She still had the towel wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair dripped onto the quilted cover. She swiped her hand absently over the drips.

"Are you hungry?" Sherlock asked.

She nodded. "Yes. Starved, really."

He stood up. "I made a plate of food. Mrs. Hudson made tea. Would you like some tea? Soup! She made soup too. O-or are you more hungry than that? I can make coffee instead. We could order takeaway," he stopped himself; it was all rather darling, and Molly couldn't help but smile. "I'll just bring you a little of everything and you can decide."

She'd barely had a chance to reply before he left the room, Toby in excited pursuit. Molly took advantage of her solitude to dress herself—labouring though she did to pull the t-shirt over her head and push her arms through the sleeves before stepping into the plaid flannel pants. Her tiny frame was swallowed by the clothes, shirtsleeves draped to her elbows, drawstring on the pants halving their natural circumference. She rolled up the pant legs five times before her feet and ankles appeared. But she was surrounded by the scent of him, and she'd rather be swimming in clothes that made her heart happy than wearing anything else in her wardrobe.

The painkillers had begun to work, and Molly took advantage of the painlessness to begin combing her fingers through her damp hair, working out the knots as best she could, trying to ignore the marks and bruises on her arms as she lifted her hands in front of her. Sherlock returned, carrying a tray laden with food as promised. He was careful to remain a considerate distance from her; Molly's heart quivered in her chest.

"Would you prefer a comb?" he asked as he set the tray down on the bed.

"Ideally, I'd need a brush," she said. "If I don't get these knots out before my hair starts to dry..."

"I'll get one," he replied, disappearing again down the hall.

Molly's lip trembled as she tucked into the plate of cheese and crisps, feeling her hunger overwhelm her to the point of tears with every subsequent bite. She didn't even notice when Sherlock returned, paddle brush in hand—she didn't ask where he'd found it or why he had it—and sat down behind her. She'd eaten every grape, too many ginger cookies, three slices of toast and drank the entire cup of tea before she even realized that he was brushing her hair.

"What are you doing?" she asked him.

He stopped. "Am I doing it incorrectly?" he asked. "I admit my experience with long hair is rather limited, but—"

"No, I mean..._why_ are you...?"

He continued to brush, slowly. "Because you need to eat," he said. "And you said if your hair starts to dry..."

"But why are you doing all of this _for me_?"

"Because," he replied, still brushing out the knots, slowly, deliberately, careful to avoid pulling or running the brush against the tender skin of her shoulders or back. "Because you seemed to need it."

Molly felt her throat closing up. "How do you know that?"

His tone had slipped back into the pitch and cadence of the detective. "Your heart rate has dropped considerably since I first stepped through the door to see to the end of your bath," he said. "I could tell from the pulse of your carotid and temporal arteries that you were in a heightened state of agitation at that moment, but you seemed less agitated when I gave you the towel—I presumed because your state of undress made you nervous. By the time you stepped out of the bath, your pulse had slowed dramatically, judging by the radial pulse in your left wrist that I took as I led you here. The clothes I provided for you had the same effect—your pupils constricted, indicating a calmer mental state. The kindness I showed in tending to your cat, the fact that I brought you food..." he shook his head. "Am I wrong, Molly?"

She laughed as the first tear of what promised to be another damned deluge dropped from her lashes. _Maybe you were wrong, Molly_, she told herself. _Maybe he didn't deduce everything. The poor man's_ c_onfused correlation and causation, for goodness sake..._

"It's not the towel or the food or the hair brushing," she chided, her voice a strangled whisper as she formed the words. "It's you, Sherlock. _You_ calm me."

His hand slowed as he pulled the hairbrush through to the end of her hair twice more before drawing it back; she heard the rustle of the quilt as he set the brush on the bed. He didn't give her a verbal response, and Molly was about to turn around to look at him when she felt his forehead resting gently between her shoulder blades. She hid her gasp but didn't pull away.

Instead, reaching her hand out behind her, she found his and held on for dear life. "Sherlock," she choked. "I'm afraid to close my eyes, because what if this is a dream? A beautiful, beautiful dream? And when I wake up I'm back _there_ and _he's _there and—"

He lifted his head. "It's not a dream, Molly."

"But what if it _is_?"

"You can close your eyes," he told her. "You can close your eyes, and know that when you open them it will be _me _you're looking at."

She blinked away foggy tears, her voice thick. "But I can hear his voice still...I can hear—"

"I have magazines," he said. "Not the _British Medical Journal_ or _The Lancet_, but I picked up a copy of _The Economist _at the newsstand the other day, and—and I'll read it to you. I'll read it to you until you fall asleep, Molly, and if you wake up, I'll keep reading it until you fall asleep again."

Molly choked on a sob; his desperation was endearing. He was so far out of his comfort zone, and yet he refused to backpedal. "You'd do that? For me?"

"Molly," he whispered, shocked that she even needed to ask. "Without hesitation."

Sherlock whispered his palms against her arms; it was a gesture of such gentle care that Molly scarcely remembered how to breathe as she lived through it. She turned towards him, twisting and ignoring the pain that ripped through her battered body until she was facing him, her legs tucked beside her. She kept her eyes on the bedspread, his bent legs, the cat hair already clinging to his trousers.

"I'm not good at this 'damsel in distress' rubbish," she chided herself.

"Damsel in distress?" he questioned. "You're not—Molly, you left clues, you fought back...you broke a man's nose and fractured his collarbone with your size five feet," he shook his head and reached for hers, his hands finding the sides of her face; he grasped her as if she were made of spun glass. "You're brave—"

"I'm not..." she wept.

"You are," he corrected. "And you're tenacious and defiant and vital and—"

"But you were the one who—"

He shook his head, effectively silencing her until he filled the silence with his voice. "I didn't do anything except carry you home."

Molly lowered her head but Sherlock tipped it back up. When their eyes met, he chanced a small, hesitant kiss between them. Molly, trembling, closed her eyes and melted.

_A soft touch...a kind word..._

He pulled away and searched her face. "You need to sleep," he said, taking the magazine and flipping to the table of contents. "Where do you want to start?"

Molly smiled. "The beginning."

He scooted back to the pillows at the head of the bed, stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankle. Then he lifted his arm, extending his hand to her and creating a space for her body to occupy. Gingerly, she moved into the void, curling around him, resting her head on his chest, and closed her eyes as he flipped open to the first article.

"World Economy: Past and Future Tense..."

* * *

Sherlock set the magazine on the nightstand and gently began repositioning Molly until she was flat against the mattress, her head resting in the centre of the pillow. He was reaching across her to flick off the only light in the room when he heard her voice, small and breathless and slightly panicked, coming from beneath him.

"Sherlock?"

"Yes, Molly?"

She sighed. "Just checking..."

Pale moonlight and the warm ochre of the streetlamp in the alleyway cut a wide swath of light across the room; that meant the clouds had parted, and the snow had stopped. The light slanted in across the floorboards, crept up over the end of the bed, and illuminated the pale skin of Molly's bare feet. He carefully pulled the blanket up and over her as she snuggled down again beneath them.

"Would you hold me?"

Her question struck him hard in the solar plexus, forcing the air from his lungs and his stomach to bottom out. After everything she'd been through, every strike of her captors hands brought down against her body and every minute of isolation and fear felt during her captivity, there she was. Alive and asking for him. It was such a simple request; the asking of it cleaved his heart in two.

_'You calm me_.' _That's what she said._

With a nervous swipe of his hand through his hair, he lifted the corner of the quilt and sat on the edge of the bed before slowly bringing his legs up and under and stretching out at her side. As soon as he was settled, Molly crept closer, pressing her back against his chest. Stunned, he held perfectly still for a long moment, unsure about what to do until he remembered that he'd been invited in, that she'd asked him to hold her.

He inhaled sharply, filling his lungs with the scent of his soap and shampoo from the cool dampness of her skin and hair, then lifted his hand and ran it down the length of her arm until he found her hand. He threaded his fingers between hers and she sighed—a deep, shuddering sigh that shook her whole body against his—as he curled his arm around her midsection and drew her closer. She folded into him with such perfection he could scarcely breathe.

It had been a night of terrible fear and overwhelming anger and shocking tenderness and gut-wrenching affection—emotions Sherlock was struggling to make sense of and categorize and deal with while still being the best person he could possibly be for the woman at his side. He pressed a chaste kiss behind her ear, letting his lips linger there for a long moment as he realized with a sudden clarity that he needed her as much as she seemed to need him.

_Is this love? _he wondered as he felt his eyes growing heavy. He would ask John in the morning. Right now, his friend was slumbering on the sofa; Lestrade had posted two uniformed police officers on the street. Mrs. Hudson had locked and deadbolted the downstairs door. And Molly was fast asleep, tucked against his side.

The flat was safe.

He could rest.

Finally.


	19. Illuminated

****A/N: I really struggled with this one-horrible headache, terrible writer's block, and a bad taste in my mouth coming from Chapter 18, which I just don't feel totally satisfied with but I just can't put my finger on why (probably due to the fact that my computer did a thing last night and I lost 90% of the edits I'd made and had to recreate them from scratch, but also because I think I'm not happy with Molly's character...maybe that she's not developed enough? Or that she's developing incorrectly? I have never gone through trauma like this, so I don't know for sure how someone would react...and would Sherlock act this way towards her? What about everyone else?) This is still a fluid story and very much a work-in-progress, and I am definitely open to suggestions about how to make it stronger. Hit me up with a PM if you have any ideas! Sending you all much love and sweet dreams, full of Cumbercookies and the Purple Shirt of Sex... XD****

* * *

31 December 2014  
Baker Street  
Morning

Sherlock felt the pull of slumber on his eyelids, resisting his attempts at rising from his bed. He was sure it had been years since the last time he slept so well, or for so long, and he was loathe to discard it without good reason. The swirling folds of his bedsheets, the warmth of his comforter sitting heavy and secure around his body, the arm wrapped around his middle…

_Arm__…_

_Molly._

Not in pieces but all at once did the events of the day before rush back to him. As every last trace of the comfort of sleep that had only moments before been the sole occupation of his rested and contented mind flitted away, the ink-black predawn gave rise to a wash of watercolour against his window. He knew the morning would bring revelations and answers, but he also knew that its light would illuminate and magnify everything that had happened, everything that had changed.

He suddenly wished for another hour of night's veiled and impenetrable tranquility, its solace and repose. He wanted time to delight in the sensation of her breath on his chest, the precise weight of her head against his shoulder and the delicate way it _fit _there, the way it felt to have her toes slipped beneath his right calf…all of it, he wanted to fix it into his memory before the garish spotlight of day shone on them both.

_And this has to be a work day_, he reminded himself.

This was far from over.

Without waking her and trying his best not to move her too much, Sherlock slipped his arm from beneath her neck and eased himself closer to the edge of the bed. He rubbed sleep from eyes and became faintly aware of the aroma of bacon coming from the kitchen.

_Shower. Coffee. Food. _He gripped the side of his head and surprised himself with a yawn._ No__…__coffee, first. And then maybe food. _He smelled the collar of his shirt. _Shower can wait__…_

He gained his feet and strode around the foot of the bed, careful to avoid the spots on the floor where the hardwood squeaked as he slip-shoed from the room, closing the door behind him.

John and Mrs. Hudson sat together in the kitchen. They had indeed made a full fry-up; plates of back bacon and thick sausages, fried eggs, beans, tomatoes, and a basket of toasted rye sat covered with tin foil and dish towels in the centre of the table.

"What's all this?" Sherlock asked.

John spun in his chair, holding a piece of toast between his teeth. "Good morning," he said as he took a bite. "Did you sleep in your clothes?"

Sherlock walked to the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee. "Where's the sugar?" he asked.

Mrs. Hudson pushed her chair back from the table. "Here on the table, dear," she intoned, patting him on the shoulder before leaning up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. "How are you, love?"

"Fine," he said as she began rinsing dishes in the sink. "I think I overslept. I feel…odd."

"Cheerful? Rested? Less prone to dramatic outbursts?" John joked. "That typically happens when one sleeps for more than one REM cycle at a time."

Sherlock pushed his hands into the counter top. "Polyphasic sleep is the only way I can get the work done that I need to get done," he insisted. "It worked for Tesla and Leonardo da Vinci. Buckminster Fuller got by on six 30-minute naps a day."

"Apocryphal," John muttered as he tore another bite from the toast. "You can't even get started in thirty minutes. He'd've been dead within a few months from sleep deprivation."

"Says who?"

John swallowed, incredulity on his face. "Says my…medical degree from Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. Pretty sure that qualifies me to speak on matters of—oh I don't know—_health_."

Sherlock scoffed and turned back to his coffee with another exasperated sigh. "The sugar?!"

"Here, Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson said, pointing at the table. "For heaven's sake…"

He took his mug to the table and sat down across the John, tossing two cubes into the coffee and stirring it with the end of a fork before beginning to fill a small plate with various items from the spread before him.

"How's Molly?" John asked.

"I'm fine."

All three of them turned to see Molly standing in the doorway to the kitchen; her right arm sat angled across her abdomen, and she clutched at her left elbow. Sherlock's stomach pitted as he realized that, for all his careful machinations, he had still roused her. But he also noted—with immense pleasure—that she was wearing his second-best dressing gown which, despite being shorter than his best dressing down, still hit her just above the ankle. Dwarfed by his clothing, she looked so diminutive, like she might fit in his pocket. He stifled the urge to attempt it and she set her lips in a firm line, shrugged, and managed a small smile.

"Smells great!" she said, cheer in her voice. "Room for me at the table?"

Mrs. Hudson dried her hands and was the first to embrace Molly, gently, on the threshold, while John pushed back his chair and waited his turn. He touched his fingertips to the bruises on her face with the ginger care of a good doctor before clasping her to him.

"God, Molls…," John muttered into her hair. "How are you feeling?"

Molly smiled as they parted. "I'm…mending."

Mrs. Hudson had her arm wrapped protectively around Molly's shoulder. "And mend you will," she said, reassuringly, before she excused herself from the flat, pending the end of an early morning laundry cycle downstairs.

John guided Molly to the table and Sherlock stood to pull out a chair for her beside him.

"How did you sleep?" he asked.

"Fine," she nodded. "I think. I don't remember waking up, so I suppose that's a good sign."

Sherlock knew she had, three or four times, woken up crying and terrified, clutching at his shirt and the bedsheets around her. He had soothed her back to sleep but it hadn't been easy. She was either lying—and her body language suggested she wasn't—or she really had slept through it all. Either way, it was troubling. She didn't look rested. _Tonight, melatonin and the Encyclopaedia Britannica__…_he told himself.

"Are there any plates?" she asked.

Sherlock had piled his own plate high with food, planning on eating it himself, but he shoved it towards her on the table instead. "I was making you a plate," he lied.

She grinned, seeing right through him. "I'm not _that _hungry," she said, taking a slice of bacon and chewing at the end. "Thanks though."

"You're welcome."

Molly began to nibble. "So what do we do now?" she asked.

The question caught them both by surprise. John folded his hands above his plate; Sherlock frowned.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Look," she sighed. "There's no point in dancing around the subject. We all know what happened, and we're all adults, so instead of making this an awkward 'don't-talk-about-the-thing' thing, I'd prefer if we could just deal with it so it doesn't become a _bigger __'_don't-talk-about-the-thing' and—" she sighed, again. "I mean…do I need to do anything? Make any more statements? Should I schedule an appointment to see a doctor?" she asked.

John and Sherlock looked at each other. Sherlock honestly had no idea. What was the process here? What did she need to do?

"Erm," John started, "If you want to see a doctor, that might be good," he coughed. "I-I'd be happy to…to—uh—examine you, if you'd like."

"Would you?" she asked. "It's not a conflict, is it? It'd take weeks to get in to my GP—she's just so busy—and I don't want to do a walk-in…"

"No, that's fine," John said, glancing at Sherlock. "Right? That's fine."

Sherlock nodded, still bewildered.

John continued. "I might also recommend a—well, a visit…or at least a call-in to a psychologist, maybe?" John offered. "I know we have several down at the clinic…we work with them quite often," he paused, clearing his throat. "You know, trauma specialists."

Molly nodded and looked down at her plate. "That's probably a good idea," she said softly. "Trauma specialists…what, like Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy? Or are we talking primal scream kind of stuff?"

John shook his head. "No, um…some elements of psychotherapy—EMDR for example—are pretty useful. Growing in popularity. I know a really great practitioner. If you want, I can get you her number."

"Right," Molly nodded. "Right. Yeah. That would be good, I think. Get the ball rolling."

Sherlock put his hand on hers. "You don't have to rush this, Molly. If you're not comfortable—"

"I can't sit here doing nothing," she said, her voice dropping. "I have to get better. I need to work. I have bills to pay…"

He heard the shift in her voice, the urgent whisper choking over and becoming clouded as her emotions crept back in. Beneath his, her hand began to quake. He wanted to tell her that those things—the bills, her job, her flat—weren't her worries, not hers alone, and that they should be the last things on the list that she could be concerning herself with. But she had turned her hand over, so her palm now rested face up, pressed into his, and was squeezing his hand, and he had temporarily forgotten the rules for proper English word order. Instead, he smiled tightly and took a sip of his coffee.

"I _would_ like to just make sure—" she started.

"Of course you can," Sherlock answered. "You know you're welcome to stay here as long as you need to."

She blushed. "I'll want a few things from my flat, though."

"We can go over today," he said, unconsciously threading his fingers through hers. "Or someone can pick up what you need. A friend, maybe?"

"Yeah," she nodded, tucking her hair back behind her ears. "I think maybe I'll ring Meena. See if she can help…"

"Your flat's a crime scene," Sherlock reminded her. "I'll have to get Lestrade to send someone in with her. To unlock it and everything. Accompany her."

"Probably a good idea," Molly nodded.

She fell silent, and Sherlock didn't reply either; he ran his thumb over the top of hers.

Across the table, John coughed, bringing them both back to attention. "So _exactly_ how long has this—" he motioned between the two of them, his eyes focused on their conjoined hands.

Sherlock gave a stern, ocular admonishment; beside him, Molly squeezed his hand before letting it go, a ferocious blush creeping into her cheeks. John simply chuckled, holding up his hands in defence in front of him.

"I'm sorry. I'll make myself scarce." he said as he pushed himself away from the table, taking his plate with him. "But for the record—it's _about bloody time._"

* * *

Baker Street  
Early Afternoon

Sherlock trod down the stairs to the front door, his laptop balanced on his outstretched hand as he pulled it open. Sgt Donovan stood on the stoop, in front of the woman Sherlock could only presume was Meena.

"Afternoon," Donovan drawled as she stepped into the foyer. She carried a small valise in her hand; behind her, Meena had a pink backpack on her shoulder, and was pulling a wheeled airplane carry-on behind her.

"Where's Molly?" Meena asked.

Sherlock pointed upstairs. "Door at the end of the hall," he said.

All-business, the woman hauled the carry-on to her side and took off up the stairs like a shot, leaving Sherlock and Donovan on the downstairs landing. The muffled sounds of female voices and then Sherlock's bedroom door clicking shut filtered down to them before they were pitched into silence.

"How are you doing?" Donovan asked.

"Me?" Sherlock asked. "Fine."

"Molly's okay?"

"Better than expected," Sherlock replied.

"That's good."

"Good…good," she said, nodding quickly to his laptop. "What's that you're working on?"

He glanced at the still open computer perched in his open hand. "Checking for new cases," he said.

She grinned. "Always working?"

He shrugged. "Need to do something."

She nodded again. The silence between them grew oppressive. But Sherlock didn't know what to say; small talk with anyone was difficult enough, and he was too shocked by Donovan's attempt to converse politely with him to make a decent attempt.

"Did you want…tea?" Sherlock finally asked.

Donovan sighed. "Look, I know this isn't officially our case anymore, and it's none of my business, but I talked to the Singh family this morning."

Sherlock frowned, giving Donovan his full attention.

They definitely didn't have anything to do with this…but there was something odd about the lease agreement for the flat."

"Odd?"

"Well no one thought Sebastian Moran would be the one to actually sign the rental documents, obviously. He'd have someone else act as intermediary, right?"

"Presumably."

"Right," she said, reaching into the valise and pulling out a file folder. "I have the rental document here for next door. Mr. Singh says the man he met with to sign the documents was a big guy—I'm guessing one of the muscle. He gave Mr. Singh three months' rent in post-dated cheques and twice the damage deposit in cash but _he didn__'__t sign the document. _Not in front of him.I mean, that's not odd in an everyday situation, but Mr. Singh says he never actually met the person who he was renting to." She said. "It could be Moran signing it, but…"

Sherlock peered over the edge of the file folder to see the document inside. It was a standard rental agreement, signed and dated and with all the proper information—including the address, the monthly rent, and all included utilities details—written out in pen by Mr. Singh. His own signature graced the bottom of the page, in the same black ink pen as the rest.

The signature of the lessee, however, was done in blue ink; the date it was signed was three days after the date Mr. Singh had signed. _That could be an error, _Sherlock thought. _Or maybe Mr. Singh is mistaken. Maybe the renter __was__ there and Mr. Singh is trying to cover up his involvement. _Sherlock shook his head, focusing on the different in signatures. It would be fairly easy to figure out when the ink from each pen had been deposited; Barts lab was well-equipped for such a thing, and even without Molly, Sherlock's own work as a graduate chemist had prepared him for such experiments.

Sherlock studied the signature but was unable to read it. The only other place where the lessee had written anything was near the top where the document asked for a name to be printed. Whoever had signed it was either illiterate or simply hadn't read the instruction to 'Please Print Here', as the name on the dotted line was an indecipherable mess of squiggles.

Donovan pointed at the two places signed by the lessee"It's not Moran's signature—at least it's not his name—but it doesn't even look like a man's signature. I mean, if I had to put money on it, I'd say this was signed by a woman."

"A woman?"

She nodded. "It's hard to make out what it actually says. But I think that's an A to start it…there's a middle name here…maybe starting with a J or a G, perhaps?"

Sherlock's stomach bottomed out as the person's initials suddenly crystallized in front of him. "A.G.R.A." he muttered.

"Yeah, I think so," she said. "I mean, it could be a pseudonym or something, but…it's odd—"

Sherlock grabbed the document, triple-checking it to make sure. _No, no__…__it can__'__t be. This is a coincidence. This isn__'__t what it looks like__…_

But the more he looked, the more convinced he was. The strikingly familiar narrow loops, the heavy pressure, the slight backwards slant, and the indecipherable signature all pointed to not only someone who was closed, cold, and withdrawn, but someone whose writing he knew, and knew well.

He was staring at a document signed by Mary Watson.

"Can I keep this?" Sherlock asked, doing his best to remain calm and emotionless.

"If it'll help," Donovan said. "I know you have connections with the MoD. I think they should see this…"

He agreed, whole-heartedly. And he knew exactly who he needed to talk to…

A sound at the top of the stairs drew his attention. Stuffing the document back inside the file folder, he heard John round the bannister and continue down the steps.

"Sally," John said.

"Hello John," Donovan nodded. "Oh, John! Before I forget…we had a call in with the Sussex Police, about a holiday cottage in Brighton?"

John nodded as he came down to land on the bottom stair. "What did they find?"

She shook her head. "Well they sent someone 'round this morning but no one was home. They're going to try again this afternoon, but…well, it's New Years' Eve and—"

Sherlock tuned her out, watching as John's face fell behind the mask of placidity he wore up front. In his hand, the folder that contained incriminating physical evidence of Mary's potential involvement in the events of the last handful of days felt heavy against his palm.

He didn't recall saying goodbye to Donovan as she left, or of John closing the door behind her. He did hear John say that he wanted to get some fresh air—_" …__nothing serious, just a walk. I__'__ll be careful. I__'__m not worried. Why should I be worried? Maybe they just went for a walk.__"_—and was dimly aware of the fact that John had left at some point, though when he realized it he had no idea how long ago it was.

Still he clutched the folder in his hand, as he marched up to the parlour—past his closed bedroom door and the soft sounds of conversation—to find his phone.

A text. From the only number now in existence that could raise his blood pressure and cause it to steam in his veins:

**Happy New Year, Sherlock. **

...followed by a sent photo of a brilliant fireworks display.

Incensed, Sherlock flicked past the text screen and punched the only number he could remember into the on-screen keypad, listening as the call connected and began to ring…


	20. Fireworks

31 December 2014  
Baker Street

"Mycroft—"

"I wasn't expecting to hear from you so soon, Sherlock," Mycroft returned. "You sound a little…out of sorts."

"You've commandeered the investigation into Sebastian Moran?"

"Yes, we have."

"Then you'll want to see the information I just received."

Mycroft was silent for a long moment before replying. "From whom?"

Sherlock ignored the question. He looked down at the folder in his hand, sitting open in his palm. "It's a rental agreement between Arundeep Singh and his new renters," he said.

Again, Mycroft was silent. "So you know then."

Sherlock fought the urge to bunch the paper in his hand. "How long have _you _known? No—" he took a breath. "Is this what you've been hinting at all along?"

"Perhaps we should have this meeting at my office."

"I'm _not _leaving. Not while Molly is here."

"Molly?" Mycroft asked. "How is she?"

Sherlock closed his eyes, gritting his teeth. "She's fine."

"I'm glad to hear it," his brother said; it was a rare occasion when Sherlock honestly believed the words. "I really wish we could be having a congratulatory phone conversation instead of this one. But really, the Metropolitan Police Service rather bungled the apprehension of Moran last night and now we're left looking—"

"I don't want to know," Sherlock interrupted. "Nothing more. At all."

"Sherlock—"

"I'm going to scan this document to you," Sherlock said, his voice dangerously even-toned. "But then I'm through. I'm done with this investigation. I don't want any more cryptic hints or insinuations. I don't want to know what's happening. I don't want to help solve it."

Mycroft laughed on the other end of the phone. "You're joking, surely."

"I'm not going to be led around like your prize-winning bloodhound, when the people around me are looking to me for help and you've got me chasing leads and keeping secrets—" Sherlock stopped himself short. "I can't. I won't."

Honestly shocked, Mycroft garbled his response. "What's gotten into you?"

Sherlock closed the folder and his eyes at the same time. He had no trouble remembering how useless he'd felt in the midst of the investigation into Molly's disappearance; how his newly minted emotional attachments had rendered him impotent against a cunning enemy. In the end, he wasn't sure he could have figured it out without Molly's intervention; now, with her recovery not even a day old, he was certain he couldn't do both. There was too much at stake. There'd always been too much at stake.

"I can't help you investigate this case and be a friend to these people at the same time," he said.

"A _friend_?" Mycroft scoffed. "What on earth, Sherlock—"

Undaunted, Sherlock pressed ahead. "I have every confidence—"

"Sherlock this is nonsense. You talking about sentimentality at a time like this?"

"Molly needs me _now_," Sherlock said. "And John is _going_ to need me, and in order to be the person that they need, I can't be involved."

Mycroft took a long time to respond, but when he did, it was clear he was not impressed with Sherlock's decision. "You think your value to them as a friend is greater than your value to your government—to your _nation_, to your _Queen_—as an investigative operative?"

Sherlock considered the question for a long moment before replying. "Right now…yes, I do."

"Really?" Mycroft shot back.

The younger Holmes bristled at the unpleasant implication that it was an impossibility that he might possess characteristics necessary to not only form such attachments but to help them flourish. But rather than lash out as he felt particularly entitled to do, he simply stood up a bit straighter and cleared his throat. "As I was saying, I have every confidence that your office will be able to handle the particulars of this investigation without need of my further consultation," he said. "Don't forget to wish Mummy a happy birthday tomorrow."

"You're making a mistake—"

The detective hung up the phone with shaking hands.

"Who was that?"

Sherlock turned to see John standing in the doorway. "John. I thought you'd gone—"

"I did," John said. "Turned back to get my umbrella because it's London in December…," he shook his head. "Who were you talking to on the phone?"

"John—"

"What do you mean I'm _going_ to need you?"

Sherlock blinked, wondering how to tell him what he needed to be told. He took too long; John strode across the parlour and snatched the file folder from Sherlock's hands, peering over the document. Sherlock pinpointed the exact moment when John's eyes landed on the most important part of the document. The doctor's face blanched; Sherlock could see the blood draining from his cheeks and the thin skin at his temples.

"What is this?"

Sherlock nervously clasped his hands together in front of him. "It's the rental agreement between Mr. Singh and his…latest tenant."

John set his lips in a firm, unbreakable line across his face. "The latest tenant. So Moran?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"The man who took Molly?"

Sherlock nodded.

John nodded in sync with his friend as he looked back to the document. "Agra. A.G.R.A. Is this—? This…this is Mary's handwriting."

"John, I don't know what it means—"

"Well it _bloody well_ looks like _my wife_ signed the rental document for the _flat next door_ on behalf of the _mad man_ who _kidnapped Molly and held her prisoner there_!" John shouted.

Sherlock glanced behind John as the door to his bedroom opened a crack. He didn't want Molly to hear this…"John, if you could just calm—"

"Do not tell me to calm down, Sherlock!" John said, shaking his head. "What is Mary doing? What does this mean?"

"Mycroft—"

"Mycroft knows about this?"

"Yes."

"You get back on the phone with him and you tell him—you tell him—"

"John…"

Crushed, John sank into the sofa. He picked up his phone and furiously dialled Mary's number; with each successive unanswered ring, his face grew more drawn. When he hung up, he called again. And then again.

Sherlock walked over to the couch. "This may not be what it looks like, John."

"How can it be anything else?"

The detective opened his mouth to speak. _Blackmail. Extortion. Moran could be up to anything__…_

But Sherlock wasn't sure any of those options would be inherently better than the one John was focusing on. It was heartbreaking; John was on the verge of tears, and Sherlock tried to comfort him with a gentle but firm hand on the shoulder.

John shrugged him off. "And you won't help?" he asked. "You've washed your hands of this?"

Sherlock shook his head, and once more glanced towards his still slightly-ajar bedroom door.

John nodded. "Right. Molly," he said, standing up. "I see. Well, okay then. If you're not going to then I guess I will."

"What do you mean?" Sherlock asked. "Where are you going?"

"To find Mary," he said. "Someone has to."

They raced down the stairs, where Sherlock finally caught up to John. He slammed his open hand against the door, preventing it from being opened.

John seethed. "Do not make me hit you, Sherlock Holmes. So help me god, you know I will…"

"What about Moran?" Sherlock asked. "What about the fact that if Mary doesn't want to be found, you're not going to find her?"

"And what if she's in danger?" he said. He twisted his hand around the doorknob and pulled, opening the door. "What if she needs our help?"

"John!"

John turned and looked at Sherlock. "You know, I respect your decision to stay out of this. I do. I mean, you are the _best hope _for finding her, but I understand," John said, spitting with sarcasm. "But she's still got me. I'm her husband. That's got to count for something."

Sherlock opened his mouth again to speak, but John was already striding away down the street, hailing a taxi as he went.

John's irrationality worried Sherlock to the point of panic. He briefly considered ringing Lestrade to ask for backup, someone to follow John. _But no, don__'__t go overboard__…_Sherlock shut his eyes, trying to work out John's route around the city. _He__'__ll try his friends__' __London home first, the ones who should be in Brighton. He__'__ll check the likely places__—__their home, the clinic, her doctor__'__s office__—__and he might try Mycroft__…_

Feeble frustration drove him near distraction. "Damn!" Sherlock slammed his palm against the doorframe and was startled by the sound of a gasp behind him. He spun, and came face-to-face with Meena on the stairs behind him.

"Apologies," Sherlock said. The engine roar of John's taxi receded as it passed. He shut his eyes. "I wasn't expecting anyone to be standing there."

Meena nodded. "Your friend…is he okay?"

_I hope so_, Sherlock thought as he feigned his way through a nod.

"Okay," Meena said. "Erm—Molly wanted to know if she could see you."

_Molly__…__yes. Molly, who is here, who has been traumatized, who needs me_, he thought. _John: soldier, a doctor, a man of considerable courage and mettle. He__'__s not out there alone. Not really. Mycroft is working the case, too__…_

As difficult as it was to turn it off, Sherlock knew he had to remain on course, true to his objective. And that objective was the defence of the woman in the room at the end of the hall, wearing his t-shirt…sitting on his bed…

"Of course," Sherlock said. "Molly. Yes." As he turned for the stairs, however, he was acutely aware of Meena's eyes on him. "Was there something else?"

"I'm just—" Meena blushed, looking down at her feet. "So you're him."

He pursed his lips. _I don__'__t have time for groupies__…_"I am he…yes."

She smiled. "Molly's been talking about you for ages."

Sherlock's eyebrow flicked, barely, and her words registered. "Has she?"

"You're exactly how I pictured you."

A frown. "How else should I appear? Other than myself?"

Meena laughed. "Cheeky."

_Is she flirting? Is this flirting? Why do I not know if this is flirting? _She hauled a purse onto her shoulder—_small purse, not exactly fashionable but that doesn__'__t concern her; she__'__s no-frills, low maintenance; vintage clothing; smells like incense; Scouser__—__[Beatles fan]__—__but she__'__s lived in London now probably longer than Liverpool; Oxbridge educated__—__[but didn__'__t Molly tell you once that she was studying law? Not a true deduction]; works in the City; faded henna on hands__—__a wedding, judging by the paisleys, leafy vines, and flower designs [all common Indian wedding motifs] and probably for a close [female?] relative [cousin? not sister__—__only child]; several tattoos, modest and covered by her clothing to avoid offending her parents; owns a [big] dog; doesn__'__t own a car [well-used Oyster card sticking out of her bag]; lives in a home with a nice yard, for the dog._

"Meena, I don't think I'm your type," Sherlock said, adding with his own knowing smile: "I was most definitely born before John Lennon died."

Meena nodded, wrapping a brightly coloured scarf around her neck. "Right," she said. "You're also not a woman."

Sherlock groaned inwardly. _Lesbian_. _Missed it again__…_

Meena grinned. "And, anyway, Molly's crackers for you, so—yeah, I'd say it's not gonna work between us," she said, stepping forward to lay a hand on his arm. "And look, Mr. Holmes, if it's true, and you think you can help her…"

He cast all frivolity aside. "I'll do everything I can," he told her.

Relief flooded her eyes. "Ta," she said, her voice barely above a whisper as she tightened the scarf around her neck. "I'm sure we'll be in touch."

"Quite right," Sherlock said, opening the door for her. She thanked him again and stepped out, following John's path towards the curb as she scanned the street for a cab. Sherlock waited until she had found one before shutting the door again.

With a weary sigh, he leaned against the door and looked upstairs again before taking the stairs. Instead of passing by the room at the end of the hall, he tread towards it.

Molly was resting on the bed, her eyes closed; she wasn't sleeping. When she felt him near her, she laboured to move over, creating space for him to sit. He accepted, and perched on the edge of the bed, in line with her hips.

"Meena's gone?" she asked.

"Just saw her out," he returned. He didn't know what to do with his hands. "How are you feeling?"

"Tired," she said. "Awkward." She paused. "I heard you and John fighting earlier."

Sherlock nodded. "I'm sorry."

"Sherlock, Mary didn't do this."

"I want that to be true as much as anyone but—"

"I _know_ it's true," Molly nodded. "Call it women's intuition. But I know she didn't do this."

Sherlock allowed himself a small smile, and Molly reached out to hold his hand. Breathless, he squeezed her fingers, so grateful for the contact. "I hope you're right."

Molly smiled, but it was small and guarded, tired. "Do you have anything to do today?"

The way her voice inflected, the rise in modulation as her throat closed up pitched his heart sideways in his chest. She was worried; she was scared; she was exhausted. His mind flashed to John, and he briefly wondered if his friend was feeling the same emotions as he scoured the city for his wife. _Alone__…_Sherlock thought, before banishing it. It didn't help him to think of John in such a way. _I can be useful here, _he reminded himself, looking down at Molly. _I can help her. I know I can__…_

He shook his head. "Just have to send an email—_scan_ something to email…and then _email_ it," he fumbled, as though getting the wording right was of vital importance all of a sudden. _She__'__s already overheard too much; she doesn__'__t need to know anymore._ "It won't take long."

She sighed and let her eyes close. "Mind if I have a quick kip?"

The thought struck Sherlock that perhaps Molly had been waiting for him to come to her so she could relent and succumb to slumber. It filled him with a strange sense of purpose, and he stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. "Of course," he replied. "I'm just going to gather my things and—"

"You don't have to stay."

He looked down at her—tired eyes, sad mouth, stark bruises across the delicate bones of her face—and he knew differently. He smiled at her and removed his jacket, laying it at the foot of the bed. "I'll be right back," he said.

It took him less than five minutes to find the desktop scanner, set it up, scan the rental document, format it, and send it to Mycroft's email address. _I should send him the text, as well__—__the one from Moran__…_he thought absently, reaching to feel for his phone in his pocket and realizing he'd left it in his jacket pocket. He gathered his things—laptop, handful of magazines, today's newspaper, a packet of crisps—and headed back into his room.

Molly was sitting on the edge of the bed; Sherlock's phone was sitting beside her. She looked stricken.

"Molly?"

"Your phone," she whispered. "It buzzed. I-I didn't look…"

He set everything down on the bedside table and grabbed the handset. Another text. Two of them, sent less than a minute apart:

**Tick tock, Sherlock.**

And then:

**Look at that! I****'****m a poet and I didn****'****t even know it! **

Each was accompanied by a photo of another fireworks display. Sherlock swiped across the screen and forwarded each message Mycroft's phone before switching the phone to 'silent', his heart thudding in his ears and the pads of his fingertips

"Molly?"

She shook her head and reclined on the bed, curling on her side. So Sherlock didn't say another word about it. Whether through willful ignorance or just blissfully blind belief, Sherlock clung to the hope that Molly was telling him the truth, that she hadn't seen the texts…

Regardless, she was able to fall asleep quickly, pressed against his side. He organized the backlog of cases and requests for his help in his email inbox, resisting the urge to check his phone every few seconds until Mycroft's reply filled his screen.

**Can****'****t keep a good detective down -MH **

Sherlock sighed.

**It****'****s for John. He****'****s out there. Help him.**

With one hand on the keyboard and the other wrapped around Molly's shoulder, smoothing a rhythm along her hair, Sherlock tucked the phone away in his trouser pocket and tried to remember how to breathe.

* * *

Baker Street  
That night

Mrs. Hudson's mulled wine sat simmering on the stove in the upstairs kitchen, and the whole flat smelled of cloves and citrus zest. She was arranging a plate of snacks, singing to herself as she worked. The television in the corner of the parlour hummed on low; nobody was watching. Molly sat curled on one end of the sofa with Toby tucked against her feet. She was braiding her hair; she'd only just stepped out of the shower and had changed into a pair of her own pyjamas, though she still wore Sherlock's dressing gown over top.

The afternoon and early evening had passed in relative quiet. Molly had slept for two hours, enabling Sherlock to get through his most urgent correspondence as well as the less important things relating to the maintenance of his case docket. Once she'd awoken, Molly helped Sherlock clean Toby's litter box—something he, as a new and temporary cat owner, had failed to do at any point during Toby's stay with him. He attempted to teach Molly how to play chess, until she got a headache, and then she asked him to watch a film with her, which he did until _he _got a headache. Mrs. Hudson made dinner, and they all ate together.

It was quiet. It was uneventful. And Sherlock was bored senseless.

He knew it was what Molly needed. She had awoken from her nap in a screaming fit, frenzied and wild-eyed as she sat bolt upright in bed, clawing furiously at unseen attackers. It had taken Sherlock the better part of half an hour to calm her down sufficiently that she could take a cup of tea and begin to relax. She didn't remember her dream; she only remembered the terror.

Her display of bravery that morning at breakfast had been just that: a display. Sherlock hadn't been fooled, but he hadn't realized the full extent of Molly's trauma until he sat with her crying in his lap that afternoon. She was far from okay…

It all left him rather ill-at-ease.

_Thoughts for another time, Sherlock_, he reminded himself as the clock on the mantle struck eleven. Molly jumped at his side; he felt the cushions move, barely, as she flinched and then squirmed a bit to hide her embarrassment.

"I'm all right," she smiled, closing her eyes. "I'm all right…"

Sherlock didn't believe her, but he had no time to do anything about it. Mrs. Hudson waltzed around the corner, carrying a tray of sweets and pastries and various cheeses arranged around it.

"I don't remember the last time I stayed up to ring in the New Year," Mrs. Hudson said as she set the plate down on the low table in front of the sofa.

"Last year," Sherlock drawled. "Though you finished off all the sherry well before ten, so it's little wonder you don't remember."

Mrs. Hudson _shushed_ him and Molly giggled, and Sherlock thought—briefly—that making her laugh would be a wonderful pursuit that he could devote himself to, wholeheartedly, if she'd let him. He'd work on his jokes, his comedic timing; he'd read the great satirists and study in stand-up comedy clubs and—

_No, you won__'__t_, Sherlock told himself, hearing John's voice in his head. _That would be an embarrassment for everyone__…_

The phone in the downstairs flat began to ring, and Mrs. Hudson hurried off in a fit, leaving the parlour. Molly picked up a few pieces of cheese and began breaking chunks off to feed to Toby, who eagerly devoured everything but the creamy Brie. He watched her work—trembling fingers squishing up bits of cheddar and Gloucester and Emmental into tiny balls that Toby could chew.

"Cats are actually lactose-intolerant," Sherlock said.

"Well he likes it," Molly replied.

"Doesn't mean it's good for him…"

"He's my cat," Molly eyed him, smiling. "Unless you've grown more attached than your litter box maintenance would attest to."

Sherlock grumped and reached out to run a hand down Toby's sleek fur. He purred, let out a short chirp, and batted a pea-sized bit of Gouda onto the floor.

"Sherlock?"

"Hm."

She was still breaking pieces of cheese in her fingertips, despite the fact that Toby was still beneath the sofa. "I was thinking…I mean…" she sighed. "You know what? It's nothing."

He turned to her. She was no brilliant conversationalist, and in the past, often, when she opened her mouth to speak a stream of verbal diarrhea was what came out. But in the space of the last few hours together, he had observed a quietness, a reticence to speak unless what was being said was of great importance. She'd obviously believed what she had to say was important enough to start to say it; that was enough for him to pursue it.

"Tell me."

She shook her head. "I don't want to get involved…but…" she blushed. "Your phone. The texts…"

"You read them."

"I should have said something earlier," she sighed. "It's been bothering me all day."

"What has?"

She shivered and drew the dressing gown tight over her chest. "Something…_they_ talked about. Once or twice. An explosion or something, I don't really remember…" she continued to shake her head, as if dislodging the memories. "I thought they were talking about _me_, about their plans for _me_ and…"

Sherlock had a flash of his own. Comments from the fake Moriarty on the night he got the burner phone from the Kensington Olympia station platform: "_It__'__s a right tinderbox__…" _Fire imagery had often been the stock-and-trade of Moriarty's verbal arsenal, but in light of Molly's assertion that they'd discussed a bomb, it suddenly made more and altogether different sense. Moran's frequent allusions to ticking, as well…and the images of explosions, even if they were fireworks…

_Fireworks._

Sherlock's eyes widened. "The fireworks. The City of London fireworks display."

Molly followed him around the flat with her eyes as he darted to the TV and switched to the live BBC feed of the crowds on the Embankment. The cameras swept along the riverbank, showing huge crowds despite the ticketed entry. A bomb going off anywhere between Waterloo and Westminster bridges would put thousands of people in harm's way. And there were so many places for a bomb to be set, virtually undetected—a boat on the water; packed into a loose brick along the Embankment walls; buried in the Thames shoreline; set in a backpack in the middle of one of the bridges; stuffed beneath the Eye itself, even, wrapped around sticks of fireworks, waiting for the fuses to be lit at midnight...

No matter where the bomb could be, the death toll would rival the worst terror attacks in the history of the world.

_Could it be? Could Moran actually be planning to wipe out New Years' Eve revellers?_

"What are you thinking?" Molly asked.

Sherlock ignored her and grabbed his mobile. _For what? What are you going to do? Text John? __Mycroft? Lestrade? What do you say?_

He'd barely had a chance to think the questions through before the faint buzz of the downstairs doorbell, followed by Mrs. Hudson's urgent request that Sherlock answer it.

"Stay here!" he ordered Molly, whose face had paled and who looked beyond terrified as the detective hurled himself down the stairs to get the door.

Mycroft, standing in the rain, his umbrella unopened at his side. Behind him, shrouded in a coat and with a hat shielding her from the brunt of the assault, stood his assistant Anthea.

Sherlock knew from the look on his brother's face that it was not good news.

"Mycroft—"

A second car screeched to a halt behind Mycroft's, and without cutting the engine, John leapt out of the driver's seat. "Why won't you return my calls? Mycroft! You can't get away from me now. Tell me where Mary is!"

Anthea raised her head at the sound of John's voice; but at the barest lifting of Mycroft's hand, she shrank.

Sherlock quirked an eyebrow. "The fireworks," he said. "You know about the fireworks?"

"You're a bit late to that particular party, Sherlock. _That_ threat has been neutralized," was all Mycroft said. His voice reflected no hint of jubilation or excitement that might have been expected from successfully defusing a situation of such magnitude.

"Then there _was_ a bomb?" Sherlock asked.

"A bomb?!" John cried. "Jesus Christ, Mycroft! What the hell is going on?"

"You should sit. We should all sit," Mycroft said, turning to John. "This isn't going to be easy to hear—"

There was murder in John's voice. "Just bloody tell me!"

"We found her," Mycroft said. "But I'm afraid it's not good—"

John lunged at Mycroft, grabbing him by the lapels and thrusting him up against the stone beside the doorway. "Where's my wife?!"

Sherlock intervened, separating the two as John crumbled against his friend. It was Anthea who stepped forward to offer her assistance, bringing John inside the entryway and out of the rain. Mycroft brushed his damp lapel and straightened his jacket.

"I can explain everything," he said. "Inside…"


	21. Coda

15 January 2015  
Baker Street

Molly walked into the parlour carrying a full carafe of coffee. "Fresh and hot," she said softly, "If anyone wants…"

DI Lestrade held out his mug. "I could do for a warm-up."

"Me too," Sgt. Donovan said.

Molly grinned and made her way to the pair, topping up their mugs with the dark liquid.

"Delicious, this," Lestrade said as she finished pouring.

"Mrs. Hudson's secret ingredient: she grinds a little bit of cinnamon with the beans," Molly winked. "Gives it a little zest, I think."

Donovan smiled. "Lovely service, don't you think?"

Molly froze, blinking a few times before smiling. "Yeah, it was. Lovely."

"Such a shame," she continued. "So young. And after everything that had happened…"

Molly's eyes darted across the room to where Sherlock stood, immersed in a conversation with one of the other doctors from the clinic where John worked. _Where Mary used to…_Molly stopped just short as she caught Sherlock's eye. _What was the signal? _she thought. _When I needed him to rescue me from awkward social conversation? Damn, what was it?_

Mrs. Hudson walked in, a tray of cookies in her hand, a handkerchief dabbed to her nose in the other. She waltzed around offering the treats to everyone—"They were her favourite…" she kept saying—and Molly remembered the carafe in her hand. She made a move to excuse herself but was interrupted by Lestrade.

"I don't suppose John will be here."

"No," Molly replied. "No, I wouldn't think so. He needed some time…it's been a difficult couple of weeks. For him. You know."

She heard herself talking and wondered if the words she said were as hollow-sounding to them as they were to her. She knew she was blushing; once again, she beamed ocular lasers across the room at the back of Sherlock's head, but the signal was lost to her.

Lestrade ran his hand up and down her arm. "I'm sorry, Molls. How are you feeling?"

It wasn't the change in subject that she wanted but it was a start. She nodded and managed a small smile, tucking a strand of gingery hair behind her ear as she cleared her throat. "Yeah, good. Been seeing someone about it. John recommended her. Wonderful therapist. I've seen her twice now. Nice lady."

Donovan shifted from one foot to the other. "Any word about Moran and—?"

Lestrade shot a dangerous look at Donovan, who realized she'd stepped in it and quickly back-pedalled. "Molly, I'm sorry. I'm just—"

"It's really okay," she said, softly, content to leave it at that. She was dimly aware of Sherlock coming across the room to her side, and used that as a pretext for a hasty retreat; Lestrade's admonishing whisper to his sergeant made her cringe.

"Are you all right?" Sherlock asked.

"I hate that people are walking on eggshells around me," she said. "Nobody knows what to say."

"I don't walk on eggshells."

She smirked. "Well you never did," she told him, setting the coffee pot down on the table and smoothing her hands over the soft silken material of the black dress. She'd purchased it specifically because it came with a jacket that covered the bruises on her arms, nearly gone but still dark enough against her pale skin to make her uncomfortable. The opaque tights on her legs provided a modicum of coverage for the bruises there, too. Still, standing in that room, surrounded by Mary's friends—_Their friends…John's and Mary's_—was an exercise in awkwardness that she had rather wished would end, and the thought made her feel awful.

"How long do we have to—?"

"As long as it takes," Sherlock said, his voice low and monotone. "That's the deal. It's what we agreed to."

"I know," she sighed. _It's harder this time around_, she thought. _Doesn't matter. It's what they needed; it's what you were prepared to give. Suck it up, Molly Hooper. _She looked up at Sherlock. "How are _you_?"

"I'm fine."

"And John?"

Sherlock nodded. "He'll be fine."

Someone across the room had decided to make a quick speech; Sherlock slid his hand into Molly's and squeezed as they both turned to face the speaker, the same doctor with whom Sherlock was talking only moments earlier.

"What was the signal again?" Molly whispered to Sherlock.

"What signal?"

"The one you told me to use when I needed you?"

He squeezed his hand around hers. "You won't need it," he told her. "I don't plan on leaving your side for the rest of the day."

Molly smiled and felt a blush creep into her cheeks. _That sounds nice_…she thought to herself as the words of the doctor broke through to reach her.

"What can we say that hasn't already been said?" he asked. "Mary Watson was simply a beautiful person…"

* * *

31 December 2014  
Baker Street

Anthea…

No.

Mary, dressed like Anthea.

_Sherlock didn't notice that the Anthea he thought was Anthea wasn't really Anthea until she took off her hat and revealed platinum blonde hair underneath. But Mary was shorter, had narrower hips; Anthea never wore trousers. Sherlock should have deduced this the minute she walked past him and into the foyer downstairs, but he didn't. He didn't deduce that this was a ruse; that Mycroft knew so very much more than he was letting on; that the Mary Watson who sat in his parlour was far more ashamed, contrite, vulnerable than the one who only three months earlier had shot him to save his life…_

_Sherlock watched the scene but was not engaged in it; like the night before at the window, watching the street below. He watched as Mycroft explained and as Mary cried and as John collapsed into his chair and as Molly shivered at his side on the sofa. He struggled to keep up; not deducing. Listening, piecing together, and always a step behind._

Mary—not her name; doesn't matter. Military service. Sniper division. Somewhere in Europe—Where did she say? Sweden? Switzerland? Never saw action; left her after conclusion of first service term. Why? Better job offer. Where? French secret service, the DGSI. Counter-terrorism. Tasked with one case file: a man in a villa in Provence named Sebastian Moran.

_Sherlock had often wondered what it was that had drawn him to France nearly three years earlier. The gangs in Brussels and the thugs in Austria and even the criminals as far away as Tibet had made whispered mention of a man in Provence; hints of a partner, an equal to Moriarty, with possible connections to French nobility ran rampant wherever he went. But Sherlock's investigation had run into so many dead-ends that he concluded the man they spoke of might not actually exist. _

_Now, he knew it was Moran he was following. He and Mary both, in their separate ways, had been on the same path for so long._

_Sherlock watched as Mary struggled to recount the details of what led her into Moran's web, and when she faltered, Mycroft picked up the story, about double agents and cover so deep it was impossible to extricate her when her safety was compromised and two of Moran's men figured out who she was. She killed them both and went on the run, ending up in London._

How long in London? Two years. Two years of hiding. Two years of peace. She met John. She _married_ John. And then…

Targeted by Moran…for leaving his organization? For suspected infiltration? For killing his men?

No, _Sherlock shook his head. _Of course not.

Because she married John Watson.

_John. His best friend—_That's how it works, right? He says I'm his best friend, so then he must be mine?—_was sitting with his head in his hands listening to the story of how Charles Augustus Magnussen learned about his wife's past life, her time as a sharpshooter and her recruitment into the secret service and eventual dangerous double life within the criminal empire of one of the most dangerous men in England. A very unlucky twist of fortune brought her onto John's path, and brought Magnussen into Moran's, and at that intersection was born a host of troubles. _

_All of this led to Moran contacting Mary and threatening to kill John outright if she didn't help him. She lied to John; she signed the rental papers for the home next door; she agreed to lay a bomb beneath the London Eye on New Years' Eve. But Mary had been set up; if it hadn't been for the still-ongoing and vast surveillance of Moran's network, coupled with the the timely receipt of Sherlock's text from Moran about fireworks and the clever quick-thinking of Mycroft and his team, Mary would have been killed by Moran's agents the moment she set foot in the service tunnel. As it was, the thugs were killed first, and Mary was intercepted instead._

_It hadn't stopped Moran from achieving his ultimate goal. Mycroft had realized only too late that while the Secret Service and Ministry of Defence was busy investigating the potential terror threat against the New Years' Eve revellers, Moran's network had managed to hack into a sensitive area of the MoD files and made off with several hundred gigabytes worth of sensitive government information about various military plans and installations to take place over the course of the upcoming year. _

An enemy with a roving target of his own, _Sherlock said. _Molly, Mary, John, the heart of Mycroft's work. How can we defend ourselves against someone this variable?

_Of all the revelations laid out, however, the worst was the fact that Mary had lost their baby, months earlier, during the incident with Magnussen. She didn't know how to tell John; they weren't on speaking terms, and he avoided seeing her often while he struggled to come to terms with the magnitude of that lie. So she compounded it by pretending. She invested in maternity clothes to cover a stomach that no longer carried a life. She bought a prosthetic baby bump from a company that produced props for films and television. She refused John's intimate advances and faked her morning sickness with such success that John diagnosed her with hyperemesis gravidarum. All while concealing the grief of that tremendous loss, shouldering it alone against a sea of hostility and misunderstanding._

_John had no idea. None of them did. _

"_This is all my fault," Mary had repeated, over and over again as the terrible story wound to a close._

_Sherlock wondered how John might react. Lied to. Manipulated. Faced with the realization that he not only married a woman whose past was a mess but whose current resume almost included the destruction of a major London landmark and the deaths of scores of innocent people. Sherlock himself was unsure how he might have reacted were he the recipient of the same news._

_But John, from the depths of his misery, didn't miss a beat. "This is so far from being your fault, Mary," he told her. "You did exactly what was asked of you by your government, you infiltrated a criminal network and stayed there for nearly two years…and in the end, it's me…your association with me…you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me…" _

_Then he reached over to grab Mary's knee and begged her forgiveness._

The sins of man, _he thought, turning to Molly, who had drifted off to sleep against Sherlock's shoulder. _Visited upon the women closest to us…

"_We need to take precautions now," Mycroft said, in a speech that Sherlock had heard before. "Our people took great pains to ensure Moran believes that Mary is dead, and until his threat is neutralized, he must persist under that belief."_

_John and Mary, holding hands across the room from Mycroft, were shaken but stalwart. United in their exquisite grief, the shock and pain of the night's revelations, and yet undaunted as they faced the uncertainty of their future._

_Sherlock glanced once more at Molly. The evidence of Moran's viciousness rested in every bruise that covered her fair skin; he knew it slept in the recesses of her subconscious mind and would awaken during the nightmares that he was certain would shake her from her slumber. Moran's indelible fingerprints were not going to fade easily; the wounds he'd caused would take months to heal. _

_John and Mary could be spared further pain at the hands of this man. And they would have each other, in one way or another. _

_Sherlock knew he already had all of Molly. Now, he was prepared to give everything to her in return. If only she'd have him…_

"_What do we do?" John asked finally._

_Sherlock looked up and caught his friend's eye across the room. "Have you ever planned a funeral?"_

* * *

16 January 2015  
St. Pancras Railway Station

The crowded outside entrance to the busy railway station was hardly the place for a meeting of this nature, but perhaps that was exactly why Mycroft chose it. In fact, Sherlock knew that was _exactly _the reason for it. Thousands of people passing through these doors meant that the four people gathered near its entrance would go virtually unnoticed.

Especially four people making their goodbyes.

Molly stood at Sherlock's side. Her neck was bundled in a long scarf, looped twice and hanging loose down the front of her chest; her tiny hands were warmed by thin mittens and the pockets of her raincoat. Still, she huddled next to Sherlock for warmth as they waited for Mary and Mycroft to arrive.

"Is John coming?"

Sherlock shook his head. "He and Mary said their goodbyes yesterday. After the funeral."

"Ah," Molly said. "Must've been difficult."

"I _know_ it was."

"Course," Molly nodded. "Silly…we've been here before."

"_He_ hasn't, though," Sherlock said, thinking of the night the plan was hatched, how sick John had looked as he realized that Mary was going to be swept into hiding until a time when it was safe for her to return. Mycroft gave his word it would not be long; John took small comfort in that, but he couldn't wipe the fear and panic from his eyes at the thought of losing his wife, their unborn child, and the entire life they'd planned for themselves in the span of one night.

"There they are," Molly whispered, and Sherlock looked in the same direction to see Mary and Mycroft coming towards them. Mary dragged a suitcase behind her, and held another bag by the handle.

"We've come to see you off," Molly said, walking to Mary and throwing her arms around her shoulders before Mary had a chance to drop her luggage.

Mary laughed; it was clear she had been crying. "How nice," she said. "Be sure to form a similar welcoming committee when I return."

"It'll happen," Molly levelled a finger at her. Sherlock noticed Molly's own cheeks were already dampened.

Mycroft was busy scanning the crowd, nonchalant but vigilant, as Mary turned her sights to Sherlock.

"We're not gonna be able to get away with too many more of these, I reckon," Molly joked, lowering her voice. "It'll reach American soap opera levels of absurdity if any more of us spontaneously return from the dead."

"Then you all need to stop getting into trouble with international crime syndicates," Mycroft drawled.

Sherlock admonished his brother with his eyes before smiling at Mary. "How was John?"

"Oh, you know," she replied, swiping at tears in her eyes. "Very John, let's put it that way."

"You'll see him soon," Molly replied.

"Yes," Mary nodded before breaking down again. "Probably in March. Definitely for our anniversary."

Molly ran her hand along Mary's arm; Sherlock offered a tissue from the wadded up ball of tissues that Molly had shoved into his pocket as they left the flat a half hour before. Mary laughed.

"Always thinking ahead, aren't you Molls?"

Sherlock frowned. "How do you know Molly had anything to do with this?"

Mary looked at him, unimpressed. "You're not the only one who can deduce, Mr. Holmes."

Sherlock shoved the tissues back into his pocket and retrieved a small piece of paper instead. "When you get to Paris, you're to phone my friend," he said. "She'll be expecting you."

Mycroft looked amazed, and slightly stunned; Molly's reaction was harder to read. But Mary took the paper and smiled. "Is she nice?"

Sherlock nodded. "She's a good person," he said. "And she owes me a favour or two."

Mary nodded. "All right," she said. "Irene Adler. I can do that."

She hugged Sherlock then, and he was surprised to find himself growing emotional as he wrapped his arms around her much shorter frame.

"You be good," she whispered. "Be good to Molly. Be good to Martha. Be good to Mycroft. And for Pete's sake, try to remember Greg's name once in a while?"

Sherlock nodded. "For you, I will endeavour."

Mary pulled away and wiped her nose with the fingertip of her gloved hand. "Take care of John. Make sure he eats well. Don't let him sulk. Remind him that I love him. So much. Every day."

Both Molly and Sherlock nodded.

Mary embraced Molly next, and before they knew it, Mycroft was ushering her into the station. Mary waved and waved, while Molly wept and Sherlock watched until he lost the white blonde top of her head in the crowd.

_She's safe. She's alive. John is alive. Mary will survive in Paris. And we can find Moran here…_

"Irene?" Molly asked, breaking his concentration.

Sherlock recognized the tinge of jealousy in her words. It surprised him and didn't at the same time to hear such an emotion coming from Molly. But rather than reacting in shock or mock outrage, Sherlock slipped his hand around hers. "Nothing to fear," he replied.

"Nothing?"

He squeezed. "Nothing."

"What did she say to you?"

Sherlock considered. "Among other things, she told me to remember Graham's name once in a while."

Molly chuckled. "Nicely done, Sherlock."

He grinned. "What did she tell you?"

Molly grew quiet, pensive. Sherlock looked down at her face, struggling to decipher her. "She told me she was sorry. She has nothing to be sorry for, as far as I'm concerned. But she said she was sorry…then she told me not to be afraid anymore."

"Afraid of what?"

Molly shrugged. "I've been afraid of a lot of things. Recent events notwithstanding," she sighed, looking down at their conjoined hands. "But you know what? I'm not afraid anymore. Mary said it would be okay. And I think it already is."

Sherlock smiled. "I'm glad to hear you think so."

"Yeah," she said. "Me too."

He kept his eyes on her for a long while before breaking away; in that moment, Sherlock spotted Mycroft returning through the throng, a look of absolute disgust on his face.

"Well, that's enough of _trains _for the day," he scowled as he approached, brushing the shoulders and arms of his suit.

"Not everyone can travel by chauffeur," said Sherlock.

Mycroft grunted. "Miss Hooper, are you still crying?"

Molly sighed. "It's a sad day, Mycroft," she retorted. "Saying goodbye to a friend—"

"It's hardly goodbye," Mycroft said as they walked towards his car. "And what are these _'friends'_ of which you speak?"

She giggled and linked her arm through his, much to his alarm and Sherlock's amusement. "Oh, but Mike—_we're _your friends."

She kept her arm linked through his until they reached the car. John sat in the backseat, nursing a pile of tissues himself. Bleary-eyed, he waited until Molly and Sherlock were inside before he began speaking and crying at the same time. Molly wrapped her arm around his shoulder and consoled him as they drove.

"I thought being on the inside of this great secret would be easier, but it hurts even more than when I thought Sherlock died."

"Well of course it does," Sherlock said. "This is your wife we're talking about here. As important as I am, I'm not married to you."

John sobbed and laughed at the same time. "There's that famous Holmes modesty, shining through…"

"Now's the time for strength, John," Mycroft said. "Mary will be taken care of. You must persevere."

John nodded. "I know. I will."

"Perhaps you should take a holiday," Mycroft continued. "Visit family. Get away from the city."

John shrugged. "I don't know—"

"It's not easy," Molly said. "But you have us still. We've done this before."

"I'll be fine," John said. "I'll see her in a few months. And in the meantime, we'll be hunting for Moran…"

"With the backing and support of the highest levels of our government," Mycroft said. "If, that is, _you'll_ work with _us_?"

"What?" Sherlock joked, motioning across the backseat of the car at Molly and John at his side. "Get the band back together?"

"We could use the help."

Sherlock looked out the window. Two weeks without a case had been difficult; of course there was the stress of planning Mary's escape to keep him occupied. But in the end he missed the chase. And more than anything, he wanted to catch Moran.

But Molly still had a long ways to go before she was ready to return to work, and certainly before she could work with him on a case. And John was in no shape to investigate anything, not like this. Sherlock wouldn't do it alone, no matter how badly he wanted to. _And do I ever want to…_

"I think perhaps we need a little more time to decompress," he said, not believing the words coming out of his own mouth. "Maybe a holiday. Somewhere…"

"The three of you?" Mycroft asked.

_Or the two of us, _Sherlock said, looking over at Molly. _Mykonos…Bora Bora…or even just a rented cottage overlooking the seaside…_

"No, not for me." John said. "You two go ahead. Just don't go and get married before Mary comes back." He shrugged. "She was very explicit in those instructions to me."

"Married?" Mycroft, Sherlock, and Molly all retorted at once.

John cocked his head to the side. "Oh come on…"

Mycroft shook his head and leaned back to listen to the driver, who was speaking to him between the seats. He nodded and leaned forward again towards the three other passengers.

"Where exactly did you all want to be dropped off?"

"Baker Street," Sherlock said, without missing a beat. "We're going home."

* * *

****A/N: There we have it-End of Part I. I hope to have a Part II and III at some point. Maybe even before S4 airs! Thanks for your encouragement, and very special thanks again to luckbringer and MizJoely for being awesome betas and helping me with the first drafts, to my favourite writer in the world (my husband) for helping me with the subsequent drafts, and to all the Sherlollians on Tumblr who were so wonderfully supportive of my first full-length Sherlock fan fiction! I hope you've enjoyed the ride! I know I have! :) ********


End file.
